I am no baker, but I do love chocolate and ‘working with it’. My intolerant child likes chocolatey things and loves a treat. Since starting my blog (feedingmyintolerantchild.com), I have been working my way through lots of recipe books trying to see if I can adapt recipes to make them suitable for Zac – and make them palatable to anyone else. Not an easy task when you have ‘gluten free and dairy free’ as your challenge. I can handle the main courses and a basic rock cake, but shy away from complicated baking. So whenever I see a ‘cake’ that is not even baked, I am always more keen to give it a go.
A few weeks ago, I mastered the art of the gluten and dairy free ‘chocolate krispie’ cake and was very pleased with the results. Yesterday I decided to see if I could add another treat to my repertoire. I remembered that there was a lovely sounding recipe in my Mum’s old ‘cookery school’ notebook, so decided to have a crack at it.
It is simply called Chocolate Crunch and that is exactly what it is!
The ingredients are:
100g non dairy butter, e.g. ‘pure’ spread
150g or 1 packet of ‘free from’ digestive’s or rich tea or even chocolate chip cookie biscuits. I only had half a packet of rich tea and half a pack of cookies, so that is how I came to mix both.
100g golden syrup
150g of non dairy chocolate – you can use a pure dark chocolate, but we find that Moo Free chocolate drops, or supermarket own brand dairy free chocolate buttons work well as they melt nicely. You could mix both as purely dark chocolate can be bitter for a child and just ‘milk’ chocolate can be a bit sweet and lacking real chocolate flavour
2 or 3 handfuls of sultanas – this is optional, we just think they make things like this even more delicious, sticky and sweet
Smash the gluten free, dairy free biscuits in a mixing bowl. Be careful not to over smash them, as it is nice to have a few ‘chunks’ to crunch as you bite.
Melt the syrup and butter and chocolate in a bowl over a pan of hot water.
Once the chocolate, butter and syrup is completed melted, smooth and shiny, pour it over the smashed up biscuit mix. You could add sultanas at this point, or just leave them out if you prefer. Stir it all together until all of the biscuit mix is completed covered and coated in the hot chocolatey sauce.
Turn out into a small to medium sized, shallow and lightly greased (with oil or non-dairy spread) tin or dish. Smooth out and then refrigerate. Should be ready in about an hour. It was so delicious, that I am afraid it didn’t make it to the next day – so I will be making it again later. But I did manage to get a few shots as proof, before my hungry husband discovered it.
An easy one to get the children involved in. A very good one to prepare well in advance, if you are entertaining or have a party or cake sale to cater for, as I often do. In fact, the first thing Tom said, after his first bite was ‘You could sell this!’. So as you can imagine, I felt pretty proud of myself and thought I should share this very simple but clearly 'impressive' little treat. Enjoy.
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