Chocolate Chip Chocolate Bread

This is the perfect, simple cake to slice and pop into school lunch boxes, or wrap up in a pretty bow and give to a friend, or take on a picnic, or serve with coffee when friends drop in, or to eat in your kitchen at 11am after a work out and again at 3pm with a strawberry and chia smoothie. Yup, that just about covers it.


Chocolate Chip Chocolate Bread
slightly adapted from Good Food

175g unsalted butter, room temperature
175g caster sugar
3 eggs
140g self raising flour
85g ground almonds
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
100ml buttermilk
1/4 cup cocoa powder
50g dark chocolate chips
100g white chocolate, chopped for drizzling

Preheat the oven to 160C. Spray a 23cm x 13cm loaf pan with cooking oil spray or line it with a loaf pan liner (I love those things). Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar on medium for about 5 minutes. Add the eggs, flour, almonds, baking powder, salt, buttermilk and cocoa and mix on low until just incorporated. Stop the mixer and stir in the chocolate chips with a spatula.

Spoon the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 50 - 55 minutes, until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 15 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Melt the white chocolate in a heat-proof bowl suspended over a pan of simmering water. Don't let the bowl touch the water. Drizzle the white chocolate over the cool cake. Leave to set before serving.