Friday Cooking: Chocolate Fudge Cake

When the librarian showed me where the kids' cookbooks are, she had no idea she was creating an obsessive monster! This week we picked out four cookbooks: two about healthy snacks and meals, one with ethnic vegetarian dishes, and one that talks about how chocolate comes about. This week's recipe comes from Mom and Me Cookbook: Have fun in the kitchen by Annabel Karmel. I got this book because we own a baby cookbook by the author; it was really helpful when I made Nigel's baby food and wasn't sure about quantities, safety, etc.

Nigel chose this recipe from all of those books. I even brought out the books we own to try and sway him to something else. No dice. Thus, Chocolate Fudge Cake was born. While the recipes in this book aren't as healthy as her baby cookbook, the directions were simple and Nigel could follow along with the pictures. He really enjoyed beating the graham crackers with his mini rolling pin and dumping all of the ingredients into the bowl. The "cake" is a little more sticky than I thought it'd be, (I guess the syrup keeps it from turning into a block.) but it was still pretty tasty. It kind of reminded me of the Sweet Dream Pie.

Ingredients
8oz graham crackers
5oz semisweet chocolate (we used dark)
5oz milk chocolate
1/2 cup golden syrup or light corn syrup
1 stick of butter
1/2 cup raisins (we used dried cranberries and dried cherries)
3/4 chopped dried apricots

Directions
Line an 8-inch square pan with plastic wrap. Break the graham crackers into small pieces. Melt the chocolate, butter and syrup in a double boiler. Remove the bowl from the heat and stir in the crackers and fruit. Spoon the mixture in the pan and press down. Cool for 1-2 hours and cut.