You know how I mentioned eating hot chocolate straight from the tub? Well, this is better. (And I never thought I’d type those words. Oh no.) Some time ago I bought a copy of ‘The Enchanted Broccoli Forest‘ by Mollie Katzen. Oh, the puddings. Oh, the enchilladas. Oh, the general eatingness of it all. And measured out in cups. I likes me some measuring cups, not least because it means one can give in to one’s natural inner greediness by substituting mugs of normal (or indeed larger than normal) stature, claiming ‘ah, but it says cup’ and adjusting the chocolate quantities accordingly while maintaining a look of childlike innocence. Oops. Did I just type that out loud? Anyway. To get back to the point. There is this pudding. It is of a chocolate nature. It is also of a beats-chocolate-mousse nature, which in my view makes it clearly the product of witchcraft. Obviously, I likes me some witchcraft too, so this is a very good recipe indeed. And it goes like this:

Chocolate Pudding*
Get hold of…
1 cup of dark chocolate chips (I used an entire bar of dark chocolate instead; think it was about 250g);
4 tbsp dark brown sugar;
2 cups of milk (I used soya);
3 tbsp cornflour;
Splosh of vanilla.

(Think this is about right, but haven’t got the recipe in front of me, and as the entire kitchen is currently coated in sawdust because Quercus is making an attic door, I’m not about to brave its depths.)

Then…
Melt the chocolate in with the (soya) milk and sugar. When it’s thoroughly combined, pour half the hot mixture on to the cornflour, and mix the buggery out of it before returning it to the rest of the chockiness. Mix very thoroughly over a gentle heat, and yes, there will be lumps, and yes, you will need to beat the fuck out of them in order to disperse them. A smooth finish is essential to this little number, and it thickens quite rapidly once you add the cornflour to the mixture. Whack the vanilla in, and pour it all into a tin. Katzen suggests covering with something to keep air out; I couldn’t be bothered, and it was fine. Chill the bally lot for at least two hours, during which time some sort of miracle occurs and the thing achieves a sort of Nutella-like consistency. It is sublime.

We have also discovered that optional, go-faster-stripe-style things can be added for differing sorts of sublimity; for example, milk chocolate and orange bits, a drop of rose or geranium oil (for that all-important Turkish Delight option), or even a good whop of ground coffee. Ah, the unalloyed bliss of it all.

In other news, we spent this afternoon trekking from one soggy part of deepest, darkest Devon to another. Cheriton Fitzpaine, to be precise (you couldn’t make these names up, could you?), wherein dwells the very lovely Chris Brookman. Mr. Brookman runs the so-green-it’s-practically-emerald Back to Earth, a natural building company through which, fortunately for us, he is happy to provide an advisory service for average eejits, i.e. us. We have returned clutching two large vats of limewash, which, for the uninitiated, is a sort of breathable paint which one whacks on top of lime plaster in order to keep the building breathing and thus, hopefully, not suffering from manky, manky damp. Say it with me: NOT SUFFERING FROM MANKY, MANKY DAMP. Let us hope not, anyway. Quercus has put a first (harling) coat of lime on the entire extension, and we are on to the pretty coat now. A mysterious contraption made of tarps and odd bits of wood has appeared over one side of the building in an attempt to keep the bastard rain off the lovely surface of the new lime render while it goes orf; poor Quercus had to re-render the wall he’d started because of rain damage when he and Lovely David couldn’t find a way to get the bastard tarps to stay in place. Fortunately, we now know that I can get quite a nice finish on lime plaster with the aid of a small but serviceable sponge, so it looks like I’ll be doing the finishing, which is quite nice, bearing in mind my love of all things pottery-clay-related.

In short, yay.

* Buy a copy of the Enchanted Broc Forest, if only for the gorgeousness of the entire concept – the front cover is blissful, as are the illustrations throughout.