Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive

~Joanne Harris

There it lay, shattered and cracked. Its pieces were a quarter-inch thick. Its edges, curving upwards, indicated its once rounded shape. We stared at the lump-hammer that had caused this destruction for one moment of suspended silence. Then, we rushed forward and started stuffing pieces into our mouths.

One year, a long, long time ago, my family received a gift of a giant Easter egg, possibly a Lir 0ne, if memory serves.  The egg was huge! According to my mam, maybe even as tall as 20 inches. Imagine! A chocolate Easter Egg TWENTY inches high. It was so thick that when we threw it on the ground we didn’t make a dint in it at all and, until my father smashed it to smithereens with his hammer, it remained impenetrable. To this day, I’ve never seen an Easter egg quite like it and, obviously, it made a huge impact on  my childhood memories. I don’t remember anything else about that day, what we wore or the other chocolates we received but that Easter Egg – it’s still talked about to this day on a frequent enough basis that when I gave the above description to my sister she guessed immediately what it was.

Recently, Suzanne from A Pug in the Kitchen made some Chocolate Orange Cream Tarts that sounded so amazing and it got me thinking about Terry’s Chocolate Orange and all the funny ads with Dawn French (one linked below). You are probably wondering what Terry’s Chocolate Orange has to do with my little story about the Easter Egg? Well, Terry’s Chocolate Orange is orange flavoured chocolate that is presented in the shape of an orange, segments and all! You can’t just break it open with just a tap, you have to give it a resounding thwack. While no lump-hammer is needed to accomplish this, you do need a wee bit of force to get it open, reminding me of that wonderful Easter morning.

In Ireland, Shrove Tuesday is known as Pancake Tuesday and you are not judged at all for eating pancakes all day long. So, that day, The Jam, the Melon and I made pancakes for lunch – crepe style as is popular in my home and one of my favourite ways to eat pancakes. We had them with butter and sugar for a sweet, and salami/ham and cheese for the savoury side. Then, for their dessert after dinner, I prepared Cookie and Kate’s Whole-wheat Pumpkin Pancakes  and served them with an incredibly delicious, satisfying, rich, indulgent, that makes you want to say “it’s not Terry’s! It’s mine,”  Chocolate Orange Sauce.

This sauce is incredibly easy to make with only 5 ingredients. The original recipe called for caster sugar but I wasn’t able to find any so we substituted Demerara sugar. If you use caster sugar, let me know how it goes! Also, if you don’t have access to Terry’s Chocolate Orange, you should look for good quality orange infused chocolate (I think, Lindt makes some). NB: This sauce would work much better on a simple crepe or pancake as it is so rich in its own right that it can take away from flavoured pancakes, like the pumpkin one. It also is amazing on ice-cream, especially vanilla, which is how we ate it for my Dad’s birthday.

PS: Sorry, the photos aren’t great as I only had the kitchen light for taking photos (it was dark by the time I got around to it, both times! I’ll make it again once Lent is over and I’ll take better photos then.)

Easy Chocolate Orange Sauce

(Adapted from BBC Good Food)

Makes around half a cup

Ingredients

• 75g/ Terry’s Chocolate Orange pieces
• 25g/ butter
• 125ml double cream/heavy cream
• 1 tbsp Demerara sugar
• zest 1 orange

Method

1. Over a double broiler, gently melt the chocolate
2. Meanwhile, stir the remaining ingredients together in a small saucepan and heat until evenly combined.
3. Remove both pots from the heat, and add the orange cream bit by bit to the melted chocolate stirring it together each time you pour some cream into the chocolate.
4. Once well combined, serve immediately or, once cooled, pour into a jar and refrigerate until needed. You can serve it cold or warm it up and it will keep for around 3 days.

Tips

The second time I made this, for my Dad’s birthday, I wasn’t using a scales and I estimated how much chocolate I needed. The thing is I forgot that 75g is a little over a third of a Terry’s Chocolate Orange and I ended up using nearer two thirds! While delicious, it didn’t stay “liquid-y” and instead hardened up once cooled. So the moral of the story is – use 75g and not any more than that!

I am sharing this on Fiesta Friday #111 which is hosted by Angie and her co-hosts this week are:  Naina @ Spice in the City and Julianna @ Foodie On Board