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.