Chocolate & stem ginger pie

This is one of my favourite things to make! Oh, it is beautiful! If eaten straight from the oven it is sooooo gooey and gorgeous.

This recipe is for a big pie but I just halved the ingredients to make these four individual pies. You can use as much or as little chocolate as you like & it doesn't matter what kind it always turns out good. I have used lots of different ones before.

Ingredients:

12oz plain flour, 8oz butter, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 6oz caster sugar, 1 egg, 2tsp vanilla essence, 1tsp mixed spice, 7oz milk chocolate (chopped), 4oz plain chocolate (chopped), 2 pieces of stem ginger, 2 tblsp demerara sugar (caster sugar will be fine).

Method:

- Grease the cake tin or individual tins & preheat the oven to 180oc or gas mark 4.

- Sift the flour & baking powder into a bowl and add the butter. Rub together to make a coarse crumble. 

- Stir in the caster sugar. Measure about 8oz of the crumble mix and set aside.

- With the crumble you now have, add the egg, vanilla essence, mixed spice and mix into a dough/paste - it is quite a sticky dough but don't add anymore flour.

- Press it into the base of the tin. I found putting a little oil on the back of a spoon and pushing the mixture around works great (see below)

- Scatter the milk & plain chocolate & stem ginger into the base. If you forget the stem ginger - add it to the crumble top instead like I did!

- Cover with the remaining crumble and scatter the demerara sugar on top.

- Cook individual pies for 30 mins or whole pies for 50 mins. Allow to cool for 10 mins before removing from the tin.
- Eat straight away with double cream or ice cream! YUMMY!

- If you make this beforehand you can heat the pie in the microwave for 30 seconds and it will make the chocolate gooey again. Perfect for leftovers if you have any!!