CHOCOLATE HONEYCOMB BISCUIT CAKE

My friend Ceri's little brother's best friend's wife (got that?) writes a very successful baking blog called The Little Loaf and she recently wrote a cook book of all her amazing recipes. I was lucky enough to receive the book for my birthday and it is full of childhood favourite treats, some with a twist, such as caramel tea and biscuit slices and coconut and raspberry battenberg and jam packed doughnuts.

After drooling over the pictures, I decided the first thing I wanted to make was the chocolate honeycomb biscuit cake. My dad used to love to make a Belgian biscuit cake and I hadn't had one in ages. This is easy to make and doesn't actually require cooking. It took about 25 minutes to make but you then need to chill it for 4 hours.

Ingredients for 10 slices:

125g butter, plus extra for greasing
350g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
1 generous tbsp golden syrup
150g digestive biscuits 
75g honeycomb (I couldn't buy any and so bought crunchies)
1 egg, lightly beaten
50g pecans, roughly chopped
1-2tbsp cocoa powder, for dusting

Lightly grease a 1kg loaf tin with butter and then line with baking parchment, making sure it comes a few centimetres above the edges. I'm not sure what size my tin was and I certainly overdid the baking parchment!

Melt the chocolate, butter and golden syrup in a bowl over a saucepan of boiling water, stirring until smooth.

Remove from the heat and set aside to cool.

Next job is to break up the biscuits - I did this with a kitchen "hammer" on a chopping board or you could gently bash them in a bowl using the end of rolling pin. You want a mixture of chunks of biscuit and large crumbs.

Do the same with the honeycomb.

Chop the pecans and mix all together in a large bowl.

Beat the egg and then pasteurise it by stirring it slowly and continuously into the chocolate mixture.

Stir into the bowl of biscuits, honeycomb and pecans until well combined.

Scrape the mixture into the prepared tin, levelling it with a spatula. I didn't do this part very well and so my cake turned out a little bit wonky! Press a piece of baking parchment over the top and then chill in the fridge for about 4 hours or until firm.

Remove the cake from the fridge around 10 minutes before serving to allow it to soften slightly. Turn it out of the tin and dust the top with cocoa powder. Slice into thick slices and indulge!

Mine didn't really look very professional but it tasted brilliant - I love the addition of the honeycomb and next time I will definitely add some dried fruit like raisins or even some sweets like jelly beans. This keeps in the fridge for up to a week…..if you haven't gobbled it all up by then!

A great first recipe to cook from the Homemade Memories cookbook and I am sure this is the start of many!

www.thelittleloaf.com