The way to a man’s heart, so they say, is through his stomach. And as Ogden Nash might have put it, candy is dandy, but chocolate is where it’s at.

Flowers are fine, if you don’t mind spending a hundred bucks for 12 lousy roses. But next week, if you want to do Valentine’s Day right, head for the kitchen with chocolate in your hands.

You can keep your oysters, your figs, your truffles. If you truly want to encourage romance, make something with chocolate in it.

Or two things. Or three.

For Valentine’s Day this year, we whipped up three of our favorite chocolate desserts. One is easy to make, ridiculously easy. One takes a bit more skill — it’s a cookie, but the recipe is somewhat more involved than most cookie recipes. And one is more ambitious, but only a little.

All of them taste divine. All of them will lead your sweetheart (or potential sweetheart) to look at you with admiration, respect and maybe even love. It’s chocolate we’re talking about, after all. Prepared properly, chocolate can move mountains.

Chocolate mousse is one of the most glamorous, elegant and impressive desserts you can make, and the version I made this year does not even need to be cooked. It is rich, silky and delicious, and it tastes exactly like a labor-intensive dish that you worked on for hours.

Yet you whip it up in just minutes in that most ordinary of kitchen appliances, a blender.

The recipe comes from Annemarie Huste, of all people, the one-time personal chef for Jackie Kennedy. Huste was fired in 1968 when Kennedy learned she was planning to write a cookbook, and this recipe comes from “Annemarie’s Personal Cookbook,” published that year. It’s simple, and it’s foolproof, with small amounts of Kahlua and orange juice making a subtle difference in the flavor.

And — so appropriate for Valentine’s Day — eating is an unmatched sensual experience.

Just one word of caution about the mousse recipe: It uses raw eggs. Though highly unlikely, salmonella is always a possibility when serving uncooked or undercooked eggs, and few things put more of a damper on a romantic mood than that. To avoid an intensely uncomfortable day or two, make sure the eggs are kept refrigerated and wash your hands and all surfaces they touch.

And just to be extra safe, don’t serve uncooked eggs to young children, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems or debilitating illnesses.

Back to romance: If you don’t want to go with the mousse, you can wow your favorite him or her with black and white cookies.

No ordinary cookies, these. Black and white cookies are some of the best things ever to come out of New York City. Softer in texture than most cookies, they are flavored with a hint of vanilla and lemon.

But it is the frosting that makes them truly stand out. One half has a sweet white frosting that blends perfectly with the lemon zest in the cookie. The other half is chocolate, but really it is just the same frosting mixed with cocoa.

Essentially little cakes, the cookies are unusual enough and delectable enough for any occasion. For Valentine’s Day, I modified the traditionally round shape of the cookies by cutting them in the shape of hearts. Simply press a heart-shaped cookie cutter into the cookies perhaps 15 or 30 seconds after they come out of the oven.

Of course, doing that leaves scraps of fresh-baked cookies that need to be eaten. It’s for the little pleasures such as these that we cook, isn’t it?

Finally, for the most divinely decadent dessert of all, you could make a chocolate fudge pie. In some senses, it is the ultimate expression of chocolate.

You begin with a crust made of finely ground Oreo cookies and melted butter pressed together and baked. You could buy your own Oreo cookie crust if you wanted, but where is the fun in that?

Into this crust goes a rich, dense blend of chocolate, cream, butter, eggs and vanilla. It takes a fair amount of whisking and a bit of mixing to get the mixture right, but the creamy, fudgy result makes the effort worth it — and so will the murmurs of appreciation from your dining companion.

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