FROM THE GALLEY OF ... Misty Fitch, aboard Tamoure GPQ Cake Ingredients • 170 g (6oz) plain biscuits (Marie, digestive or similar – a mixture is okay, and it’s a good way to use up stale ones) • 80 g (3oz) dark chocolate (cooking chocolate is fine, not expensive dark) • 40 g (1½ oz) butter • 150 g (5 oz) mixed dried fruit, pre-soaked in alcohol if preferred • 4 tsp cocoa • 2 tsp golden syrup or honey • rum or brandy – a generous splurge • pecans/walnuts – optional, but nice if you have them Bash biscuits in a plastic bag, not necessarily to fine breadcrumbs – keep some ‘bite’. Put the chocolate, butter, cocoa, and syrup/honey in a saucepan and melt to mix well, then take off the heat. Add the alcohol and dried fruit and mix well. Finally stir in the biscuits. Line a shallow plastic dish with foil, add the mixture and cover. Leave in the fridge for a few hours (the difficult bit!), or in the freezer if you have one. Once hard it can be removed from the container and wrapped in foil – it only needs the container to keep its shape when soft. Credit for this recipe should go to Di of Independent Freedom, who introduced me to it, and whose permission I have to submit it. I have amended the ingredients slightly – less butter, more booze – and when the Skipper declared that ‘Chocolate Refrigerator Cake’ didn’t describe it very accurately I renamed it Get P****d (into an alcoholic state) Quickly Cake, or GPQ for short. I have also removed Di’s wise and well-meaning comment when she passed over the recipe: ‘It’s very rich, don’t over indulge...’.
Dinner ran a smooth course, but just as coffee was being brewed the hull, from pitching regularly, began to roll... Every loose article in the boat became audibly restless. Cans clinked, cupboards rattled, lockers uttered hollow groans. Small things sidled out of dark hiding-places, and danced grotesque drunken figures on the floor, like goblins in a haunted glade. Erskine Childers, The Riddle of the Sands 62