Fairtrade Chocolate Recipes – Chocolate Cake With Candied Ginger – Ken Hom
November 5, 2008
Ingredients
340 g dark Fairtrade chocolate, broken into pieces
142 g unsalted butter
125 g Fairtrade sugar
50 g crystallised or candied ginger, very finely chopped
4 large egg yolks
6 large egg whites
40 g plain flour
Unsalted butter to grease tin
Method
- Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4.
- Combine the chocolate, sugar, butter, and ginger in a double boiler (a bowl in a pan of hot water would do). Melt over a medium heat, stirring until the ingredients are thoroughly blended.
- Allow the mixture to cool, then whisk in the egg yolks, then the flour. Mix thoroughly.
- Beat the egg whites until they form firm peaks.
- Add one third of the egg whites to the chocolate batter and mix vigorously. Then gently fold in the remaining egg whites.
- Butter the tin and add the mixture. Bake for 35-40 minutes until the cake is firm.
- Allow the cake to cool for several hours before removing from the tin. Dust with powdered sugar.
Chocolate is a “Comfort Food” in tough economic times.
November 5, 2008
.. So said Gilles Marchal of luxury French chocolate maker La Maison du Chocolat. He says that they have not seen a drop in sales, despite a gloomy economic outlook.
Nearly 90 percent of people polled in August for the “Salon du Chocolat” and French newspaper Le Figaro said chocolate had a positive impact on their spirits. Research has demonstrated that when a person eats chocolate, the body releases dopamine, a chemical in the brain’s reward centers that sends signals of pleasure.
Production and consumption have risen consistently over the last few years in France. The country’s chocolate market rose eight percent alone last year to €2.7 billion and producing more than 360,000 tonnes in 2007.
According to some statistics,the Swiss are the world’s top consumers of chocolate, eating 12.kgs per person, per year! Germans eat 11.2kgs per person, Britons 10.3kgs, and Belgians 9.3kgs.
Chocolate makers are constantly coming up with more weird and wonderful flavours to add to chocolate to promote interest in their products. Among some of the more unusual recent combinations are cauliflower chocolate, cheese-flavoured chocolate, basil, dried tomato jam, black olives and even chocolate biscuits encrusted with chicken skin…
At the yearly chocolate show in Paris, organiser Sylvie Douce said that this year’s trend was fair trade chocolate. “More and more consumers are aware of the problems facing cocoa producing nations,” she said. Chocolate-lovers too are now demanding high levels of cocoa, said Douce. “A decade ago people couldn’t swallow chocolate with 90 percent cocoa. Now they want less sugar and cream and more cocoa because they believe it’s better for their health.”