Yay, another market day successfully completed yesterday with only a mild amount of stress and only a little disruption to my highly busy schedule of growing a butt shaped indentation in my sofa and playing far too much M.U.G.E.N. (I’ve been feeling exceptionally geeky since the post about TCHO and I had to let it out somehow).

The stall pretty much sold out of everything by 4 o’clockish thanks to loads of friends turning up again to help take the stuff off my hands and to help out selling the stuff too! It could be that some people would probably frown upon my business if they knew that all my employees were only being paid in chocolate… but they seemed to turn a blind eye for umpa-loompas so maybe I just haven’t found the clause in the International Labour Laws that says something like

“Oh, unless they’re being paid with choclate. Then you can do whatever you want, it’s all good.”

All the sour chocolatey things seemed to go down really well at the market. The umeboshi chocolates were especially popular with a pair of Japanese tourists who turned up fairly early on in the day and the very first group ever from Chocolate Ecstasy Tours came round to the stall and quite liked them too. Just to make the day even better, a guy who writes the guide to London markets came round at exactly the same time so it made me look really popular. Hahahahahahahahahaha!

Actually, now that I think about it, the chocolate tour was probably the best part of the day! I’ve never had such a crowd of people all around the stall who were super keen on trying/buying/obsessing about chocolate… it’s just a shame that in all the excitement I completely forgot to give them the cake….

The Chocolate Sauerkraut Cake

I thought for this that I’d just go and steal someone else’s recipe and point you to that… but none of the ones I could find online seemed to be as chocolatey as I like to have my cake so I just used one that’s pretty close to my normal chocolate cake, but with a whole load of sauerkraut added in and less moisture and salt to make up for it. It might get a change at some point when I try making it again, but it tasted pretty good so it probably won’t change much. I’ll be giving the other recipes out there a try just to see if I was wrong and if really is better as a more spongey and less fudgey cake. Oh and hopefully there’ll be a picture of the cake to go here too as soon as I can steal one from Alice.

(picture stolen! thankyou Alice ^_^)

150g unsalted butter

250g caster sugar

2 large eggs

100g cocoa powder

a pinch of baking soda

200g self raising flour

100g of sauerkraut (drained weight)

First off set your oven to 180 degrees C and grease up a baking tin (I think I used a 2lb loaf tin for mine) and then warm up the butter in the microwave until it’s soft (I don’t have a microwave and I used my hands… yay for health and safety!).

Rinse and drain the sauerkraut to take a little of the edge off the flavour then chop it coarsely and leave it on the side while you do the rest of the mixing up to see if any more water comes out.

Cream the butter with the sugar until it’s nice and fluffy and then beat in the eggs. Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl and then beat them in a little at a time into the wet mix. Finally, mix in the sauerkraut and pour it into the baking tin.

Bake for 50 minutes and then test it by sticking a skewer in the top. If it comes out clean, then it’s done; if it’s kind of gloopy then put the cake in again until it does come out clean. You might find that the top starts to get a little hard whilst the cake is cooking and if you start feeling worried about it then just pop some silver foil over the top and everything will be fine.

Once it’s cooled down just grab a spoon and eat it straight from the tin… or if you’re feeling adventurous then a bit pop a piece on a plate and add a (un)healthy dollop of creme fraiche and a weensy bit of mustard!