Fairtrade Fortnight: Praline cake

Praline cake is the closest I have to a family recipe: my paternal grandmother made it for my dad, my dad made it for me, and now I make it for my workmates. Despite the name, praline cake doesn’t contain nuts, presumably due to its origin during the rationing of the Second World War. The original recipe combined margarine, sugar, drinking chocolate, ‘syrup’, and sweetened biscuits (my grandmother used Rich Tea), topped with an icing which my dad found too sweet. Over the course of a few experimental batches I modernised the recipe, using metric units and Fairtrade and organic ingredients.


Recipe

400	g	digestive biscuits (organic from Doves Farm)
100	g	water
100	g	butter (organic from Yeo Valley)
4	tbsp	golden syrup (Fairtrade and organic from Rayner’s)
4	tbsp	cocoa powder (Fairtrade and organic from Green & Blacks)

Crush the digestive biscuits with a rolling pin. Put the water, butter, golden syrup, and cocoa powder into a saucepan and heat, while stirring, until the butter has melted. Combine the liquid with the biscuit crumbs and then press down into a flan tin. Cut once cooled.