Sinful chocolate pound cake with chewy carame bites and choc chips

Growing up, we were obsessed with Sara Lee pound cakes. They come in many flavours- all butter, double chocolate, marble etc- in tin foil boxes with beautiful and colourful pictures of the goodness within. We often reheated slices of these in the oven- so that they have a crispy toasted crunch on the outside, moist and buttery on the inside...yummmmm... unfortunately these are not available in the UK.

Check out this link which tells the tale of how consumers complained about the original Sara Lee pound cake being too dry, then subsequently complained about the new version and requested to have the old version back... that says a lot about how good these pound cakes are!!!!!

Sadly, we have not been able to find THE recipe that would replicate those mass produced deliciousness from Sara Lee's factory. That said, during this quest we have come up with our very own sinful chocolate pound cake - dense, moist and packed with chunks of chocolate and caramel bites...

INGREDIENTS

1/3 cup pure cocoa powder

1/4 cup honey

3 - 4 Tbsp boiling water

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp coarse sea salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup sour cream

1/2 cup milk

140 cup sugar

2 sachets vanilla sugar (7g in each sachet)

125g butter

2 large eggs

100g choc chips / chopped milk chocolate chunks

100g chopped caramel bites

DIRECTION

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Butter and flour-dust a loaf pan. Tap out any excess flour. Set aside.

2. In a small bowl, mix cocoa powder, honey and boiling water until it forms a smooth paste. Let cool.

3. In a medium mixing bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda.

4. In yet another bowl, mix sour cream and milk.

5. In a large mixing bowl, beat sugar, vanilla sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

6. Mix in eggs, one at a time, followed by the cocoa mixture. Mix well.

7. Mix in 1/2 of flour mixture, followed by 1/2 sour cream mixture, followed by remaining flour mixture, and lastly remaining sour cream mixture.

8. Stir in chocolate chips and chopped caramel bites.

9. Bake in pre-heated oven for 1 hour 10 minutes, or until tester inserted comes out clean.