Chocolate and Amaretti Slice

Dom is celebrating the second birthday of Belleau Kitchen, his superb food and cooking blog.  So Random Recipes #15 has gone all cakey- bakey in a birthday kind of way! 

 

I piled up a selection of my baking books, praying that the macaron book would not be the one picked, anyway I needn't have worried because the random number picker chose #1 which is The Best of Cadbury Chocolate Cooking.

Opening the book it fell open at a page 77 with a choice of four delicious recipes.  I chose to make 'Bournville and Amaretti Slice' but as I didn't use Bournville chocolate but a generic brand which is why I have called it  

Chocolate and Amaretti Slice

175g Amaretti biscuits

3 tablespoons Amaretto Di Saronno liqueur

275g plain dark chocolate, broken into pieces

300ml double cream

75g unsalted butter, softened

50g caster sugar

1. Line a 500g loaf tin with clingfilm.  Crush the biscuits into small pieces.  Put them in a bowl and pour over the liqueur.

2. Melt the chocolate and half the cream.  Cream together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.  Stir in the chocolate and cream mixture, then the remaining cream.

3. Spoon about one third of the chocolate mixture into the tin.  Scatter half of the biscuit pieces over the top. Spread half of the remaining mixture, then add the remaining biscuits. Finish with the remaining chocolate mixture.

4. Chill the chocolate cake over night until set.  Invert on to a plate and peel off the film.

5.  You can decorate by creating scribbly lines with melted chocolate piped across the top. Or you can just slice and serve because it's quite rich enough as it is!

This is totally indulgent, rich and needs to be served in very small slices.  If I made it again, I think I would simply mix the biscuits into the chocolate, because it does tend to crumble a bit when you cut it.  The liqueur comes through strongly so it's a grown up slice, but you could use orange juice and if you don't like almond flavours at all, then other crunchy biscuits like gingersnaps would probably work just as well.