January 17th, 2010Alan WalshBeer Recipes

As my housemate very kindly offer to cook me tea the other  night I decided to repay the favour by making a big old chocolate sponge for us all to have after. The recipe is really simple and takes minutes but the results are fantastic although they do come with the warning that this is a really filling chocolate pudding, not a  light ‘posh’ dessert.

Ingredients (My Nan gave me this recipe so it’s in oz – I make my apologies to the EU!)

6oz – Self-Raising Flour

2oz – Cocoa Powder

8oz – Butter

8oz – Castor Sugar

4 – Eggs

1 Packet Chocolate Chips

Method

The method really is easy, the first bit being the most labour intensive. Cube the butter and castor sugar together in  a bowl with the back of a metal spoon. Crack the eggs into the bowl and stir in until the mixture is smooth then sieve the flour and cocoa into the bowl and stir that in too!! Finally chuck the chocolate chips into the mix and give it one final stir. The mixture should be smooth but not too runny and, although my Nan tells me off for doing it, should taste delicious if you put a finger in!!!

Pour it into a greased oven proof dish (for a ‘pudding effect a deep dish is best but the same mixture can be used to make small single cakes in cake cases – half of the listed amounts will make about 12 small cakes) and put into a pre-heated oven at 18o° C. Cooking time will depend on what tin you’re cooking in, small cakes about 20mins but this big bad boy took about 45, if you’re trying to find out if it’s cooked tap the top – if it’s soft and wobbly it’s not done if it gives a little but springs back it’s cooked.

I served it piping hot with Custard and a Wheat Beer called Moosbacher. I had toyed with using a dark Ruby Ale or a Chocolate Stout but I thought that they would offer too similar tastes and wanted to juxtapose something lighter – having the beer similar to the  custard!

I think the food pairing went well with an understated wheat beer such as this. A Blue Moon
or something equally bursting with flavour would be too much but the wheaty hopped flavour is just enough to fight with the chocolate-fest but not enough to beat it. The beer itself is smooth and the 4.9% abv means that you could probably stretch to more than one with dessert without getting bored, bloated or Bamboozled!

Tags: Beer and Food, Chocolate Sponge, hoppy, Moosbacher, Pudding, Wheat Beer