Chocolate praline pancake cake

Learnings:

• further evidence website newsletters work
• don't let the boyfriend 'just do one thing' while sugar is at crucial stage.

C'mon, this is my second attempt with boiling sugar, I'm allowed to stuff it up.

Saw the chocolate praline pancake cake in a Good Food website newsletter, and it just looked so good, and as you can tell, I really like gooey, chocolatey desserts.

Again, the recipe split quite easily into segments, and I think dishes are easier to do that way. (Especially if you're making braised pork chops at the same time).

First, the praline. It's simply a sugar syrup with blanched almonds and sea salt tipped it. I panicked when after boiling it went completely dry and looked almost like dessicated coconut. But I remind myself that cooking is often a case of holding your nerve, and so eventually, the 'coconut' began to smell like burnt sugar - the good kind.

Just as it was all becoming caramel, Andy became worried about the sugar round the sides of the pan (probably because he'd have to wash it up) and began asking to push it back down. I knew it was stuck fast, but eventually let him have a go. I wish I hadn't - I knew there wasn't time with melted sugar, and I had to snatch it back pretty quickly. I think the caramel was ok, perhaps a little darker than ideal. There really wasn't much syrup around the nuts, and I think if I was doing this again, I'd perhaps go up to 150g of almonds and 200g of sugar. So there'd be more caramel, and more praline all round. We found it difficult to achieve an even 'blitz' with the food processor, so some of the praline was pulverised and some intact nuts.

Much later, after dinner, we went back to do pancakes and chocolate sauce. Now, after all my experience (and the fact it always seems to me much easier than I had thought it would be when I was younger), I reckon I could make chocolate sauce in my sleep. (How about it, sub-conscious? Slightly less running through rooms and more chocolate sauce?)

I am, for whatever reason, not great at things like omelettes and pancakes. However, Andy displayed a undiscovered talent for making pancakes, though where on earth the '12 pancakes' from this recipe came from I do not know. I think we got seven.

So we layered them up, poured the chocolate sauce over it (I am not a person who believes in moderation in chocolate sauce) and baked it.

It was very pleasant, but didn't quite belie its origins as a pancake dish; the pancakes themselves made it sort of bland. I think I'd make up a set of chocolate sauce and praline and have them on hand for spare pancakes. Or, as I suspect is the idea, to impress friends if I had them over on pancake day.