- Greetings, my beautiful lovelies. It's Emmy. How are you? It's great to see you, and welcome back. Today's video is sponsored by HelloFresh, the food delivery service that brings fresh
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videos for all of you. (mellow music) Today, I'm gonna be making a dessert I had never heard of until a beautiful lovely
told me all about it. Aiden King, thank you so much
for getting in touch with me to tell me about chocolate concrete, also known as chocolate
crunch, or chocolate brick. Do you know of this dessert, or pudding, as they call it in the UK? I have learned from many
of my British viewers that pudding is not just
that creamy pudding-y thing that we think of here stateside. Pudding is also a word
to describe a dessert. So this dessert, called
chocolate concrete, was often served at school lunches, or school dinners, as it's often coined in the UK. And it is similar to a brownie because it's chocolate and butter and it's got some flour and sugar, but it is packed down and
has a much firmer texture. That's why it's sometimes
called chocolate crunch. It's a much beloved dessert. It takes many people back
to their childhood days. From my understanding, it is no longer served. But another thing I found
interesting about this dessert is that it's served with a pink custard, a bright pink custard, or kind of a milk cream sauce. So you've got this beautiful
brown chocolate bar served with this cute pink sauce. Sold. Let's go ahead and make it. First thing I'm gonna do before we do that is I'm going to prepare my pan. If you don't have parchment
paper to line your pan, you can just butter it liberally. But I love using parchment paper, 'cause it makes it really easy to take the dessert out of the pan. I've showed this before, but I will demonstrate again. This is how I line my pans. I just go like this -- a square size makes it super easy, and use my pan to guide me where the edges are. Okay, so just....a square
pan makes it really simple. Put that in there. And I'm just gonna put a little notch so that it sits better in the pan. I've just cut it like that and then we can just place it in here. Just so it's not so high in the oven, I'm gonna make another
notch with some scissors, 'cause my oven is pretty small. Plus we don't want the paper
touching the heating elements. So you're just gonna fold that down a bit. How you do this does not matter so much. It's just that you have your pan lined. Now, we'll set that aside. In this bowl, I've got some melted butter. It smells great. Look at that beautiful color. To that, I'm going to
sift in some cocoa powder. Oops. Sugar. Lots of sugar. And flour. Plain old all-purpose flour. And I've got some granulated sugar that I've set aside for later. That's it. Those are our ingredients. I'm gonna stir this in. The sifting helps us get rid of any lumps, especially with the cocoa powder, which is so fine that it tends to lump. Behind me, I have my oven
preheated to 350 degrees. Okay. A sieve is really great
for getting out any lumps. Oh, and the butter, I use salted butter, by the way. Now we're just going to
gently stir it a bit. Now, this is going to be a very dry and crumbly mixture, from what I've seen. And this is purposeful, because this is called
a chocolate concrete. So I imagine that comes
from its firm texture. But it's also called a chocolate crunch. So it's supposed to be quite dry and firm, but the ingredients sound delicious. I don't see why this
would not be delicious. Okay, since it's so crumbly, I'm gonna mix it with my hands. I'm gonna grab a pair of gloves. There's the mixture, very crumbly. So what we wanna do is just evenly distribute all that butter and really knead it together. It smells so good, that combination of chocolate and butter. So if you squeeze it, it does kind of hold its shape. See that? So just wanna make sure we get the flour really incorporated in there. And if you don't have salted butter, you could just add a pinch of salt. I will salt mine, actually. Alright. I think we are pretty well mixed. I don't see any dry patches. Smells so great already. I mean, we could eat it like this. Although, flour, I've been told, should not be eaten raw. So maybe we shouldn't. Unless you toast it. I've made a cookie dough batter before that's meant to be eaten raw, and it recommends heating or toasting up the flour first, precisely for that reason. Okay, so now, we're going to take the
pan that we prepared and pour this mixture right into the pan. This is an eight-inch
baking pan, by the way. Okay, so here is our crumbly mixture. And now the real trick to this, I've read, is that you
really need to compact this. This is the "concrete" portion. Now, most recipes say
to just use your hands and really press it in, but I recently heard of a trick that I really wanna try. I usually use a flat bottom
measuring cup like this when I'm making like a tart or something to press down the crumb or a graham cracker crust. But I recently heard of this trick of using a loaf pan. I happen to have a small loaf pan, which would be perfect for
getting into these corners when you're using a square pan. So let's try it. First, I'm just gonna give a general tamp. Oh, yes, that works beautifully. Look at that. All ready. Yeah! Okay. Then I'm gonna get a just
kind of cursory flattening, even-ing. Even-ing. Not like night evening, but flat. Leveling, I think, is the
word that's more precise. I'm gonna use my paper to help me out here and get in the edges. Very nice, very nice. And then really press hard. So when I press hard, it compacts it down. Can you see that? I'm packing it in one direction and then doing the opposite direction. Oh, this is great. This is a great tool for this -- I love having the right
tool for the project. I also love coming up with ways when you don't have the right tool. That's very fun, too. So I have it collecting a
little bit in the corners, so I'm using the paper to help me get it out from that edge there. I suppose you could just press it on top of the parchment paper as well. Let's try that. So I'm folding the parchment down to make sure I get all
the way into the edges. It's interesting, as a
person from the States, to hear the term "pudding" used generally as a word for dessert. I have such strong associations with pudding as something
that is thick and cool and creamy or chocolatey. So to think of this as a
pudding is interesting. Alright. So I think my concrete
is hard like concrete, nicely firm. I think this is as hard as I can press it. Alrighty. Beautifully flat, even, and compressed. So now we're gonna pop this into a preheated 350 degree Fahrenheit or 180 degrees Celsius oven and bake this for 20 minutes. We allow it to cool just a little bit and it can be eaten warm or at room temperature. When the chocolate concrete
is a little bit cooler, it'll have a firmer texture. So it'll be more like
that crunch or concrete. So I think that's how I'm gonna have it. Alrighty, lovelies. I'll see you in a little bit. (mellow music) So while the concrete is baking, let's make the hot pink custard that often accompanies it. So first thing we're going to need is some custard powder. You can make custard or a creme anglaise from scratch, if you like, with some eggs and milk. But I think this is pretty typical and this is probably what
was served in the cafeteria. So this is what I'm going to be using. This is Bird's Original Custard Powder. And based on what it
says in the ingredients, it looks like it's cornstarch and vanilla and salt. I would've thought this
contains some kind of milk, but we're going to be adding milk to it. So, yeah, I guess it's mostly cornstarch. This is what it looks like. Let's open it up. A slight pink cast to it. Slightly. It doesn't really come up on camera, but maybe that's the
annatto coloring in it. Gives it kind of a yellow color. So because I'm making a pink custard, instead of using just regular whole milk, I'm gonna be using strawberry milk. This recommends adding some sugar to it, but my strawberry milk
is already sweetened. So I'm gonna skip that. One heaping tablespoon into my bowl. Pot, not a bowl. (Emmy laughs) This says an equal amount of sugar, but, again, because this is sweetened, I'm just gonna add half
tablespoon of sugar. Then we get a spatula and mix those two together and add a little bit of milk to it first before we turn on the heat. Oh my gosh. Smells like strawberry Pocky. Okay. Ooh, look at that pink color! I love it. Love it. Look at that color. Can you see it? You can't see it. Okay. You'll see it once it happens. Oh, and yes, look at the custard powder. It's kind of orange. So pink and orange together might make more yellow. Might make an orange-colored sauce. Well, we'll add more food
coloring, if need be. We wanna make sure that
our pink sauce is pink. So what we're doing is
dissolving the cornstarch into the milk so we can avoid lumps
once we add the heat. Then we add the rest of the milk. So that's it. Now we're gonna add the rest of the milk. Okay. Pink is definitely taking over, but I think I'm gonna add a little bit more pink
food coloring to that because I want this to be pink, you know? Because the custard powder
has some yellow color in it, it's making this look more peach. So I'm gonna add a couple drops of pink. So let's add one drop of red food coloring and see where that takes us. Not too... Oh! Oh, yeah. Okay. Alrighty. Now we're gonna add some heat. Right? Why aren't you lighting? Is this can of fuel empty? Oh, yeah. (high-pitched tone) Let's try that again. Add some fuel that's full. And, yes. Thank you. So we're just gonna bring this to a boil and it should thicken. I want that pinker. So I'm gonna add a drop of pink, see how that looks. Okay. Yeah. Now we're talking. Yes, that's, that's it. Nice, soft Pepto-Bismol pink. Can you see that? Yes. Beautiful. So we're gonna let that come to a boil. Since we incorporated
the cornstarch initially, we should not have any lumps. Boil, boil, bubble and toil. Alright, bring this to a boil. Then I will be back. (mellow music) Okay. Alrighty. Chocolate concrete is complete, almost. So right when the concrete
comes out of the oven, we're supposed to take a little
additional granulated sugar and sprinkle it on top. Some recipes I read, you put it on before, with a little brush of water, but I like the idea of
putting it on after, a little extra crunch and sparkle, snowy, snowy effect. You know what I mean? See, this distribution,
yeah, I don't like. Okay, that's better. So this, of course, will
give it added sweetness, but it will also add some texture, too. It smells so good. It smells a lot like a brownie. It doesn't look exactly
like a brownie, though. I read that these are best
eaten the day they're made, but you can keep them
in an airtight container for up to five days. So in order to hasten the cooling process, I'm gonna take this out. This is why I love parchment. I'm gonna pull it out, place it on a rack to
help it cool off a bit. And my pan is very clean. I'm gonna let this cool just a bit before we slice into it. It can be served either hot or cold. I think I'll cut it first, and have one while it's hot and one once it's cooled off. Ooh. Slices beautifully. Let's eyeball this. Have a look at that. Look at that. That's beautiful. That looks like a brownie to me. A very dense one. Grab my concrete. Oops. Then I'm going to take our hot custard, put it into a pitcher, mix in any skin that has formed. And now we're going to pour
the sauce right on the top. Look at that pink sauce. Give this a taste. My first bite of chocolate concrete. Itadakimasu. Mm-hmm. Oh, boy. Is it ever sweet. The first thing I taste is that warm strawberry
pocky flavored sauce. It's more milky than creamy. I like that it's not as rich as it looks. That's because we have lots of cornstarch that basically just thickened
the strawberry milk, but it has that very familiar Nestle Quik strawberry milk flavor. It reminds me of being a kid. It's great. Now, the chocolate concrete itself, to me, it tastes a lot like a brownie because it has that beautiful combination of butter, sugar, and cocoa. But the texture is very different. So let me have a piece
without the strawberry sauce. This is warm, just a bit crumbly. Mm. Mm-hmm. The texture is a little bit similar to like a shortbread cookie, a sandy. It's very crumbly, yet this is warm, and it has that really great crunch that comes with granulated sugar. Kind of crunchy, yet crumbly, buttery, and chocolatey. Mm-hmm. It's kind of a cross between a cookie and a bar cookie. You know how bar cookies
are a little gooey? This one's not gooey. It's more sandy, but it's got a great chocolate flavor, and it's, surprisingly, not as sweet as I thought it was going to be. I think combined with the custard sauce, it's definitely sweeter. But alone, it's actually not overly sweet. Mm. Mm-hmm. Really like that warm. I wanna try it when it's cold, though, and see how it crunches. But warm, it's so lovely. Mm-hmm. I actually prefer it without the pink custard sauce. I like the look of the pink custard sauce, and the flavor of the
strawberry is very nostalgic, but together, I feel like the chocolate and the strawberry are kind of competing. They don't necessarily
complement each other, in my opinion, in terms of flavor. I think in terms of texture, it's great that you've got dry, kind of crumbly cookie with this sauce. I think the combination of textures works. It's just not the flavor. Maybe vanilla custard, plain custard, but it's great alone. I don't think it needs the custard at all, in my opinion. Sorry, Brits, if I offended you. Mm. Mm-hmm. So I'm gonna let this cool off a bit and we'll do another taste with it cooled off, but beautiful. Alright, so I'm gonna wait about, I don't know, a half an hour, and we'll taste this again to see what it's like cold. Alrighty. See you in a little bit. Alrighty, lovelies. I have a piece of chocolate concrete that is completely cooled. Now let's give it a taste and see how it compares
to it when it's warm. Alrighty. Once again, itadakimasu. Still very tasty, and much more cookie-like than previously. Previously, it was much more crumbly. Not quite a cake at all, but crumbly. In this case, it actually holds together, but it's not as moist as a bar. If you're having a blondie, for example, it's not like that. It's much sandier in texture. I like the flavor. It's a very rich, chocolatey flavor without feeling dense at all. Once again, it's more
similar to a shortbread. Mm-hmm. It's got a great crunch on the top. It's got that great
sandy crunch on the top from the granulated sugar, which goes really well with the sandy, kind of
crumbly shortbread texture of the chocolate concrete itself. Very good. Not nearly as sweet as I
thought it was gonna be. I like that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I think this would go really nicely with an icy cold glass of milk or a nice cup of tea. Mm. Hmm. Alright, my lovelies. Thanks so much for watching. And big thanks to HelloFresh for sponsoring this video. If you'd like to try
HelloFresh for yourself, click the link down below or go to HelloFresh.com and use my code "60EmmyMade" to receive 60% off and free shipping. Thanks again for watching. I hope you enjoyed that one. I hope you learned something. Please share this video with your friends. Follow me on social media -- I love hearing from you -- "like" this video, subscribe, and I shall see you in the next one. Toodaloo. Take care. Bye! (mellow music) (Emmy vocalizes) (Emmy sighs) Chocolate concrete. I imagine this is a lot
tastier than concrete. I've never eaten concrete
before, though, so... Hmm. Now to find a cup of tea.
