Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Prince William's Royal Wedding Chocolate Biscuit Cake

   As well as cutting ye olde traditional fruit cake, Prince William and Kate Middleton will offer a chocolate biscuit cake to their guests at their wedding reception. I read about this on-line in the UK newspapers. Chocolate biscuit cake? Sounded intriguing so I did some research, read some recipes and decided that this was exactly what I wanted to make for tomorrow night.
    Backing up a bit, a number of us get together for a "stitch and bitch" session every Thursday. Knitters, textile artists, French, English, ranging in age from 80something down to 30something, we meet at someone's house for a couple of hours to work on our projects, swap ideas and chat. The evening usually winds up with a pot of tea and biscuits.
   Naming no names but somehow, a while back, wine got into the act. Last week someone brought along a bottle of Normandy cider. Someone else brought along a bottle of Vin de Noix from her family's stash, and said it went very well with chocolate cake. Hence the chocolate biscuit cake to be unveiled tomorrow night.
Love the simple ingredients...chocolate, butter, golden syrup...

Throw in some squashed biscuits, hazelnuts and raisins....
    I've lost the bookmark for the recipe but I did print it out so I can tell you what goes into it. Let me know if you want precise quantities.
    You start with quitealot of butter, quitealot of chocolate and two tablespoons of golden syrup. I had no problem finding the latter as it's a constant on the "British" shelf at the local SuperU, along with jars of Marmite and sauce to make instant chicken tikka masala.
     Anyway, what you do is mix the butter, chocolate and syrup together over low heat until you have a thick chocolate sauce. Then stir in lots of biscuits that you've put in a plastic bag and bashed with a rolling pin (making sure to leave some chunks). The recipe calls for "Rich Tea" biscuits but I couldn't find those so I used "Petit Beurre" which sounded far more decadent. Also add in chopped hazelnuts and raisins. Stir everything together and spoon into a square cake tin. Let cool and put in the fridge. Immediately rinse the pan with water so that you're not tempted to scrape up and eat what's left.
     I'll report back on what it tastes like....

2 comments:

Veronica said...

Goodness, what a coincidence! I had no idea Wills and Kate were planning this childhood favourite when I recently posted a chocolate biscuit cake recipe on my blog. If only I'd known :) I think everyone in Britain has fond memories of this cake. So easy to make, and popular with adults and kids. I use Petit Beurre too, they're very similar to Rich tea.

linda meinhardt said...

this cakes looks great i will be making it next weekend, will let you know the results. hope all is well in france? colin and i will be spending the month of september in provence hope to see you then.
linda meinhardt