Split pea soup with a chocolate sponge for pudding!

Split pea soup is an old classic, so I thought I'd give it a go. It's very basic and quite nutritious. I used a recipe I found online, I later found a recipe in a old wartime leaflet that would have made it far tastier and more interesting!! I will definitely do that version next week and you'll see the difference! This time all I did was get some dry green split peas from a supermarket, measure out 1 cup full (for two people,) into a pan and add 3 cups of water and a stock cube then heated and simmered the mixture for about an hour skimming off the foam at the end and adding extra water as needed. I also added chunks of spam for extra flavour. It doesn't look like much so this version wouldn't impress visitors but the pudding should make up for that.....

Now onto the more exciting bit!! The chocolate sponge!! The recipe is from the ministry of foods leaflet, number 30, "Cakes, biscuits and scones without eggs."

Chocolate sponge

Ingredients:
1/2 lb self raising flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp cocoa
3 oz. Sugar
1 tbsp syrup
12-14 tablespoons hot water
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
3 oz. Margarine
A drop or two of vanilla essence.

Method:
Mix the flour, salt, cocoa and sugar together. Dissolve syrup in the water and add the bicarbonate of soda. Melt the margarine and mix all the ingredients together, including the vanilla essence, but do not beat the mixture, which should be very soft. Bake in a moderately hot oven for 20 minutes.

You can use two 8" sandwich tins if you want to make a classic sponge cake that you can put a jam, chocolate or cream filling in. I used a loaf tin as we are just going to have the odd slice occasionally with a nice cup of tea. :)