Something happened to me when I turned 30.
I began to crave something I’d never craved before. Don’t get me wrong, I’d liked it before, but not like this. It was like a switch had been turned on that made me a bit crazy. But it was powerful and such a freaking cliché that I was mortified at my un-uniqueness. Surely I was above all this, “Oh honey, when you hit 30 you get really tetchy if you don’t have it EVERY SINGLE NIGHT!” crap. I wasn’t a sassy ‘Sex in the City’ type chick. No! I was edgy and cool (I hoped) and not a cliché at all!
Boy, was I proved wrong. Just when I’m starting to congratulate myself on the imaginings of my aforementioned alleged cool (think Kurt Cobain, but a girl and happy) it happens.
30! And in a flash…
…I was gone. Deep within the grip of a most powerful desire. The grip belonged to chocolate and the flash was a Cherry Ripe wrapper flying past me as I ripped it off of my delicious beloved inside.
(SATC - That's them, isn't it?)
I’ll tell ya, it was spooky. I could feel it shift in my DNA. My tastebuds opened up and discovered the warmer, more bitter, darker, more lingering flavours on my palate. I kept trying to resist it, but I started to get a new found amazement for chocolate. Maybe it was because I stopped eating just Cadbury’s and started to eat more complex assortments. The first time I had a Haigh’s chocolate frog… well, it wasn’t pretty I can tell you. My eyes pretty much rolled back into my 30 year old head and I think I drooled a bit.
Yum.
Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.
Yum.
Fast forward.... a certain amount of years.... I’m hooked.
Unlike pasta, chocolate regularly manages to make me loosen my grip of my sensible eating sword, drop it and have a nibble on a Giant FruiChoc. God, those things are evil. But good evil, like Jack Nicholson. They are delicious and massive, so you eat one and convince yourself, “oh, I’ve only had one”, and then end up eating another 4, which pretty much equates to an entire packet of regular FruiChocs.
Remember: There is no ‘T’ in FruiChocs.
And this, my friends is a recipe for Dark Chocolate Sorbet…. Oh don’t get me started on ice-creams…..
250g castor sugar
60g Dutch Cocoa
½ tsp ground Greek Coffee
pinch of ground cinnamon
3 cups water
Mix the dry ingredients to a smooth paste with a little of the water in a saucepan. Add the rest of the water and whisk the paste through. Bring the mixture to the boil, stirring until dissolved.
Simmer for 5 minutes and then allow to cool completely for at least 5 hours, better if its overnight.
Then churn in an ice-cream machine according to instructions.
