Chocolate Concrete (or Crunch depending on who you ask) is the stuff of British School Dinner legend. It was always served as a pudding but is actually more like a hard crunchy cookie. Known to bend spoons if not eaten with care and skill this delicious school time goodie is also served with a pink strawberry flavoured custard.
When I was at school I used to look over longingly at the school desserts from the designated packed lunch table. It was only when I was a bit older that I realised if you offered to help tidy the canteen then you got to eat leftover dessert! So you know me….
I know this one is in demand so here is the recipe;
Chocolate Concrete
- 200g plain flour
- 200g sugar
- 50g dairy free margarine
- 50g lard (you can use all marge if you like)
- 50g cocoa
- pinch of salt
Preheat oven to 180 c
Mix all the dry ingredients into one bowl
Gently melt the marge and lard then pour into dry ingredients mix in then use your fingers to rub together mix until it resembles a crumble mixture.
Pour into a brownie tin lined with greaseproof and push down with your hands until level.
Bake for about 20 minutes.
Remove from oven and mark out slices with a knife. Sprinkle the top with a little caster sugar.
Gently slide out of tin (but still on paper) onto a wire rack to cool.
Make Pink Custard (if you like)……..
Pink Custard
- 5 tbsp cornflour
- 3 tbsp sugar
- a few drops pink food colour
- 1/2 tsp strawberry extract/essence
- 500ml rice/coconut/oat Milk
Combine the cornflour, sugar, food colour and extract in a bowl.
Measure the milk into a jug and use a little to combine the other ingredients to make a paste, using a whisk.
Pour the rest of the milk into a saucepan and gently heat until hot but not boiling. Once hot pour into the pink paste, whisk to combine and pour everything back into the saucepan. Now you need to keep stirring with the whisk until the mixture just comes to boil and thickens to a nice custard consistency, this won’t take long. Once thickened remove from heat and pour over your Chocolate Concrete. Yum.
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i bake without 
Lovely!!!!
Specially that pink custard, gorgeous!!!!
You know I think I have tasted the something like this chocolate crunch, It sticks to the teeth and then you can chew it for hrs right… Yum…
Wow, that is well pink! My little girl would loooove that. I never thought of colouring custard, nice thought.
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Thanks for sharing on Allergy-Free Wednesday. Hope you’ll join us again this week with another great recipe!
I just made this and it was awesome! I’m gonna make a couple more batches tomorrow but thinner this time and then sandwich them together with some chocolate ganache.
oooh that sounds yummy too!!
can u tell me the size of yr tin?
20 x 30 cm approx
can I use self rising flour?
Unsweetened Cocoa Powder Bourneville will b good 4 this cake?
Can u tell me how long I can keep my cake?
2-3 days or more?
Thank You so much xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I would not use self raising flour as it wold change the consistency of the cookie. That cocoa sounds fine. Probably keep a week in an airtight container x
I just made this and it was so simple! It tasted delicious and exactly as I remember it from school, thanks for this awesome recipe!
Glad you liked it! 🙂
awesome!! My little girl can now have things with chocolate in it!! I hadn’t thought of just using coco to make my own chocolate things. She held this biscuit and loving munched it for 30 minutes!! Not a bit was wasted lol
hi just wondering if this would turn out the same if i used WHEAT free plain flour, i’m not allowed to have anything with wheat in it
it should be fine, it being biscuity will not rise much anyway, Im going to try it.
Hi Shazz, honestly I would try it and see. It’s such a simple recipe anyway. Let me know how it goes! 🙂
oh how I remember the horror that was cake and custard for school dinners, haunts me to this day lol. But now I make dairy free custard I like the stuff. Going to give this a go for Bob, sounds high fat, therefore high calorie and I can use gluten free flour. Thanks for linking up.
Hi I’m just wondering I made mine yesterday and wanted some tonight after tea. What is the best way to reheat it ?
Sorry Toni, I have been away from my blog such a long time! Hope you found a way!
Mmmmmmmmmm! This is so amazing and wonderfully chocolatey. I used just dairy free soya and 100g of sugar-have to watch my sugar levels a bit…..fablious, thank you so much! 🙂
Hi Bev
I don’t have dairy free Marg I use bertoli. Would that make much difference??
We served ours at school with mint custard😊
As long as you don’t need to be dairy free that would be fine. Mint custard! Mmm
Hi just wondering what cocoa powder you use
It’s a Dutch brand ( I live in Belgium)
Hi Bev 😊😊 Could I use ordinary margarine & should it be block Marg such as stork, or could I use the softened Marg such as stork with butter?
Yes of course. That would work fine! 😀👍🏻
I think either will work fine
Thanks very much Bev 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻😊😊
No problem! 😀
Wats the difference in dairy free marge and normal marge? Do u have to use dairy free or can u just use 100g of normal marge?
The difference is my son is allergic to dairy. You can use any butter or marge you like
So is it 50g of both or 1 or the other?
I specify in the ingredients that you can do either.
made a batch using 50g of cocoa but me and my boys thought 2 much so halved it on next batch and bingo much better thanks for sharing this recipe
Glad you enjoyed 😀👍🏻
My son likes very strong bitter chocolate so maybe it is too chocolatey for some! 😉
Hi dont you use egg? Without egg does it come out rock solid ?
No I don’t use eggs. But this recipe doesn’t call for eggs anyway. It’s a hard shortbread like cookie how hard it turns out will depend on the butter/ margarine you use more than than egg.