Monday, June 21, 2010

Chocolate Heaven




This dessert has been likened to chocolate brownie. I think it has something more to it than just being brownie.

Not that I have anything against brownies, but when this is a dessert baked in a round tin and has biscuits in, to me, it just isn't brownie.

I once baked Chocolate Heaven, and a girl who was paying a fleeting visit to Bristol from Australia, who just so happened to eat it, sought me out via e-mail from Down Under because she needed the recipe that badly.

So here it is...

Chocolate Heaven

Ingredients

350g / 12oz dark chocolate (pref. 70% cocoa solids)
225g / 8oz unsalted butter
5 eggs
300g / 10oz golden caster sugar
100g / 4oz butter biscuits or shortbread (I use fox's butter crunch biscuits)

To serve:
cream & blueberries

1) Grease & line a 23cm / 9" round springform tin. Preheat the oven to 160C / 140C fan oven / gas mark 3

2) Place the chocolate and butter (diced) into a glass bowl and place over a pan of simmering water. Stir occasionally until melted.

3) Whist the eggs and sugar for 5 minutes using an electric whisk (or a balloon whisk if you don't have access to an electric one, and happen to possess a whole lot of arm power). When the mixture is light and bubbly, and has doubled in volume, it's perfect.

4) Pour the chocolate mixture into the egg muxture, then gently but thoroughly, fold in. Add the broken biscuits then fold them in.

5) Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 40-45 minutes until just firm. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for about half an hour.

You can serve it while still warm - it will be amazingly gooey and impossible to make it look beautiful, but totally delicious. Or, you can wait until it has cooled and serve cold.
If you chill it (up to a day ahead) it will be lovely and fudgy.

Isn't this brilliant? A dessert that can be gooey or fudgy or a little bit like brownie? I love it.

If you're anything like me, you'll be searching for the flour in the ingredients list. Even when you've read over it a good few times to know that your eyes are not deceiving you, you will get to the stage where, in a regular sponge cake recipe, you'd add the flour, and think, 'have I missed something?!'

Nope. You have not. There is not a single ounce of the lovely white stuff in this dessert.

Enjoy.

Cake Count :: 677