Chocs away

“Anything is good if it's made of chocolate.”
Jo Brand"

Chocs away

Do you like it at 35%, 70% or are you really hardcore, and prefer 99%?

Chocolate connoisseurs amongst you will have recognised those figures straight away: 35% is the minimum amount of cocoa solids necessary for chocolate to be defined as ‘dark’, according to EU rules. Dark chocolate with at least 70% cocoa solids is considered virtually a health food these days. And 99% is the upper limit at which a chocolate bar is edible – although for most of us, only just. Actually, one retailer has recently introduced a bar with 100% cocoa solids – no sugar, no other flavourings – but admits that most people buy it ‘out of curiousity’.

Appreciation of good chocolate is on the rise. The days when a bar of Bournville was the height of sophistication are long gone – these days, you can buy astonishing creations from chocolatiers whose names are as familiar to cocoa aficionados as One Direction’s are to a teenage girl. Gerard Coleman, Paul A Young, William Curley, Chantal Coady – all stars of that velvety brown firmament.Here at the Pipe and Glass, we like to think we’ve added to the canon of great chocolate recipes in our own small way with a pudding that’s been on the menu since we opened back in 2006, and which is so relentlessly in demand that it’s unlikely ever to come off it. Five Reasons to Love Chocolate is an extravagant platter comprising a rich, nutty brownie, an elegant mocha mousse, a crunchy-topped white chocolate brûlée, a dark chocolate sorbet, and an intriguing chocolate cone filled with orange ganache and orange jelly – a posh take on a Jaffa cake. It’s probably one to share, to be honest.

“We usually use Callebaut chocolate in our recipes,” says James. “They’re a Belgian company favoured by a lot of chefs, and all their chocolate products are exceptionally high quality. We use different percentages for different recipes, depending on the effect we’re trying to achieve. “There must be people out there that really don’t like chocolate, but I don’t think I’ve ever met one – it’ll be a long time before we have a pudding menu that doesn’t have chocolate on it!”

Chocolate may be having a moment, but let’s face it, it’s always been popular. This beautiful cookery magazine – our illustrations show its front and back covers – dates from the early 1920s. Just 6d, and clearly an essential for the early 20th century cook: “Chocolate lends new charm to cookery,” it tells us, and continues: “The dash of chocolate is one of those fine touches which make an everyday dish a Luxury Dish. With the help of our little collection of recipes, the woman who loves to cook good things will find this favourite flavour used in its most convenient form as Bournville Cocoa. Everyday Cakes, Hurry-up Puddings – you can make all your meals dainty and delicious if you keep the larder well stocked with Bournville Cocoa. Every recipe in these pages has been made with this ingredient. Try one to-day and see if it is not the best Chocolate Dish You Ever Tasted!” Alongside favourites which you might find in any modern recipe book, like chocolate sauce, Swiss roll and gateau, it features recipes for a few confections that have generally fallen out of favour over the last 90 years or so – chocolate Suffolk pudding, cocoa blancmange, or chocolate sago mould, anyone?

If you needed proof that chocolate appeals to people of all sorts, see below…

“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt.”Charles M. Schulz

“Anything is good if it's made of chocolate.”Jo Brand

“If some confectioners were willing To let the shape announce the filling, We'd encounter fewer assorted chocs, Bitten into and returned to the box.”Ogden Nash

“What you see before you, my friend, is the result of a lifetime of chocolate.”Katharine Hepburn

“My wife can't cook at all. She made chocolate mousse. An antler got stuck in my throat.”Rodney Dangerfield

The recipe for chocolate mushrooms, reproduced below in all its wordy glory, is one that we think worth reviving.
Chocolate Cookery is in the Scarborough Collections of museum objects in the care of Scarborough Museums Trust. We’d like to thank them for their help with this.www.scarboroughmuseumstrust.org.uk
Chocolate mushrooms

Ingredients

½lb flour
¼ flat teaspoonful
carbonate of soda
¼lb margarine
1 egg
1 teaspoonful cream of tartar
2oz cocoa
7oz castor sugar
Milk

Chocolate butter icing
9oz sugar
¼ lb butter
2oz cocoaVanilla flavouring
2 tablespoonfuls milk
Almond Paste
½ lb ground almonds
¾ lb icing sugarVanilla flavouring
About 1½ egg whites (add more if required)

1. Sieve the flour, cocoa, soda and cream of tartar. Rub in the margarine finely. Add the sugar and mix the other ingredients. Beat up the egg and add, with sufficient milk to mix all together. When well mixed, beat for a few minutes. Put into small greased cake-tins, putting only a small quantity into each one. Bake in a hot oven for about 12 to 15 minutes, then put on to a sieve and leave until cold.

2. To make the almond paste – roll the lumps out of the sugar, then rub it through a fine sieve. Add the almonds and mix together. Whisk the whites slightly, and until smooth. Cut off a piece and save for the stalks. Roll out the remainder thinly, and cut into small rounds. Brush the bottom of the cakes with white of egg, using it very sparingly, and mould almond paste over each, leaving the top of the cakes uncovered.

3. To make the chocolate butter icing – roll the lumps out of the sugar, then rub it through a fine sieve. Put the cocoa into a saucepan and mix to a smooth paste with the milk, then stir until dissolved – a little more milk may be used if required. Dd the butter to the sieved icing sugar, and beat both to a cream. Add the cocoa and a few drops of vanilla and mix all together, then leave until it becomes stiffer before using it. Fix a rose tube on to an icing-bag. put some of the icing into it, and force onto the cakes, from the edge of the almond paste to the centre in straight lines until the tops are completely covered. Mould the remainder of the almond paste into stalks, and stick one in the centre of each mushroom.

4. Note – if the cakes have risen much in the centre, a small piece can be cut off before the butter icing is put on.

PUBLISHED :April 2014
TAGS : RECIPES SPRING SUMMER FOOD
View the latest issue of The Pantry online

STORIES & RECIPES

Introducing InnSpire

Honey, honey…

At the races with the Pipe and Glass

Dark chocolate honeycomb bites

food served

BAR OPEN

CONTACT

DIRECTIONS

SUBSCRIBE