Recipe 11 - Melting Chocolate Puddings

As you might remember I'm having quite a lot of chocolate focused books. Now I'm halfway through the second month and hadn't used any of them so far. If I'm not careful and spread it out a bit I might end up eating even more chocolate than usual in the weeks before Christmas. Chocolate it is then!

The book
The recipe is from a really small and handy book called "101 Chocolate Treats. Tried-and-tested recipes." (ISBN 978-0-563-53928-5), apparently the product of a collaboration between GoodFood Magazine and BBC Books. The list of recipes is quite diverse - cookies, trifles, pudding, cakes, ice cream, profiteroles - but they never venture into the really crazy chocolate recipe territory, like chocolate pasta or meat with chocolate sauce. A lot of these recipes look delicious - why didn't I use this before? Maybe because of psychological problems. Roland gave me this book as a present, when I was feeling sick and he thought it would make me feel better to look at chocolate. Subconsciously I might now connect this with not feeling well, which is never good in cookbook context.

The ingredients
140g/5oz dark chocolate, chopped
140g/5oz unsalted butter, diced
3 large eggs
3 large egg yolks
85g/3oz golden caster sugar
25g/1oz plain flour
vanilla ice cream or single cream

The recipe
Preheat oven to180°C/gas 4/fan oven 160°C. Butter six 175ml/6 fl oz dariole moulds and stand them on a baking sheet. Melt the chocolate and butter in a bowl over a pan of hot water (or in the microwave on High for 3 minutes).
Beat the whole eggs, yolks and sugar with an electric mixer for about 3 minutes until pale. With the mixer on medium speed, whisk in the melted chocolate. Gently fold in the flour, then divide among the moulds. Bake for 10-12 minutes until risen, but still flat on top and not quite firm. Loosen the edges with a round-bladed knife and turn out immediately. Serve with ice cream or cream.

The testing
I used the 99% Scharffenberger chocolate for that extra chocolatey flavor, but still used a bit less sugar, about 75g only and I only made 2 portions. The recipe is for 6, so for two I divided everything by 3. Worked fine. Not much to say about testing, to be honest. It's just as simple as it sounds, the only problem might be getting them out of their moulds. I don't have the perfect moulds for this type of pudding, but with the right ones it shouldn't be an issue.

The result
I served it with some leftover kulfi ice cream and can really recommend that combination. The cardamom flavor of the ice cream goes very well with the chocolate, the pistachios, too. The puddings were indeed still gooey on the inside, which might explain the difficulties in getting them out of their not so perfect moulds, so visually this might be less appealing.

The verdict
Absolutely friggin' fantastic! Super fast, super easy, super yummy. These were so great that I broke my personal record for recipe re-tries and made the same puddings again just 3 days later for Roland's birthday - with the full amount of ingredients listed, because we were 6 people in total, and a different chocolate brand and cocoa content (Green & Black's, 100g dark chocolate, 40g milk chocolate). This one can be done so fast that popping into the kitchen for a short time, while the guests keep chatting in the living room, is completely doable. Makes you wonder why they make such a fuss out of it in restaurants.