Mr Chocolate bought this lovely, sumptuous book awhile ago. Adventures with Chocolate, by Paul.A.Young has so many recipes that you just turn page after page thinking wow, I wonder what that tastes like. The photography is quite dark and alluring.
This recipe caught my eye, as I love all the ingredients and together who knew what taste sensations would happen. I did change it just a little as I like to cook to my tastes. Selfish perhaps… but I want to like what I am making. So a tweaked version of the original.
Chocolate Ginger and Cardamom Tea Bread
100gms chopped uncrystallised ginger
100gms raisins
2 tps ground cardamom
zest and juice of one orange
100gms dark muscavado sugar
200ml strong black tea
2 beaten eggs
200gms S/R flour
100gms partially melted dark chocolate (70%)
Ginger, raisins,cardamom,sugar, orange and tea all in a bowl together and let soak over night. Next day add 2 beaten eggs to fruit mixture, and fold in flour. Then fold in melted chocolate. Bake at 160C for approx 1 1/2 hours. Cool in cake tin and then turn out to rack.
Verdict… I don’t know. It was tasty, but was it delicious?… It was like all the ingredients were vying for attention. The ginger was jumping up and yelling hey look at me! The chocolate wanted to be the star, and the raisins wanted everyone to talk about them. I was going to make it again and tweak it some more, but just couldn’t decide how I could make it better, (maybe I couldn’t?).
If anyone has any suggestions, I would be very interested to hear them.
cityhippyfarmgirl 
This is definitely an unusual recipe. I think you’re right. There are too many strong flavours. You could a few things. Replace ginger pieces with 2 teaspoons of ground ginger spice. You could also replace the tea with water allowing the mixture to soak for a little while rather than overnight. Would be good to hear about your experiments with this recipe.
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I will definitely play, they are good suggestions though so thank you.
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What a wonderful combination of ingredients you have used here. I am new to your blog but will be back often. I love your recipes and observations. I hope you are having a great day. Blessings…Mary
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Thanks for the kind words Mary, and for taking the time to read my little blog.
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Mmmmmm that looks delish!! I’m not sure why it wouldn’t taste amazing, as I can’t imagine anything better than ginger and chocolate!! May I will give it a go myself… I’ll let you know what I come up with 🙂
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Oh let me know what you come up with Amy if you do make it. The original recipe asked for 250 grams of crystallized ginger, and the chocolate just broken into pieces, if that sounds better to you. (I’m not a fan of big chunks of chocolate which is why I partially melted it, and the ginger thats all I had.)Oh and no juice of the orange, just the zest…. maybe that was my undoing?
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I think it is probably all a bit to much for me. I love the, individually but think it would be a bit overpowering all together. Saying that…you have to try these things, right?
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Yep, you sure do. It is fun to play!
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That is interesting – I think Choclette did chocolate and cardamom recently as well, and that combination does sound appealing, although I’m not sure how the ginger would go in that mix…hmmm…food for thought, thank you! 🙂
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Chocolate and Cardamom are great flavours, and I regularly use them together- so they work…raisins and chocolate work…ginger and chocolate work….orange and chocolate work… tea…hmmm, tea. Musing here, maybe the tea and the orange juice ditch them?….will muse some more….
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All those ingredients sound interesting together…haven’t seen muscavado sugar on the shelves here…another thing to put on my aussie shopping list…x
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Muscavado sugar is delicious!
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What an interesting sounding group of ingredients! I have a friend who makes a chocolate and ginger bread and butter pudding that is delicious…so I know I like that combo. Adding cardamom…I can’t say really, would need to try it. If it were me making it….I would probably omit the juice and zest and substitute the tea for milk, whey or water (adding extra to make up for the juice)….. I’m not a big fan of raisons, so would probably substitute nuts instead…..just thinking out loud..or in the written form as the case may be 🙂
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I love to type out loud 🙂
Those suggestions sound good. Ditch the juice and tea, I’ll keep the raisins and add a few nuts. Cardamom and ginger its just a little chai flavoured when you add those….*sigh* … I need to give it another crack don’t I.
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Sounds delicious, but bold and strong to me. Will have to give it a try… one day…. I love cardamom but it’s a taste people either love or hate. Look forward to the taste test. co m.
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Sorry it’s taken me so long to check this one out. It certainly looks good and the recipe sounds as though it would be delicious. I will just have to try it out myself and let you know.
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Well nearly one year on, I’ve finally got around to making this loaf and blogging about it.
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