I originally found the basis for this recipe in a collection edited by Alexa Stace, and have since tweaked it considerably to make it my kind of pudding very intensely chocolatey, moist, and dense, and not too sweet. It doesn’t keep very well I’m afraid it goes very hard when cold (which doesn’t stop the human dustbin in our house consuming it at whatever temperature and age he finds it, bless him).
This recipe is a good example of when cocoa can be a real boon baked products are like alchemy in some ways if you play around with ratios of ingredients too much, you get an inedible result. With chocolate flavoured products this can be a problem, as the fat content of proper chocolate can spoil a recipe enter cocoa, which ups the anti by giving an intense chocolate flavour, without turning a sponge cake mixture into a greasy brick.
I added the cherries to give a bit of added interest to the recipe but you could leave them out, or replace them with other dried fruit if you prefer apricots, figs, mango or papaya should all give an equally palatable result.
Note: the pudding rises a LOT in the oven it will look tiny when it first goes in the pudding basin, but don’t be tempted to use a smaller basin or you’ll end up with a horrible burnt mess on the bottom of the oven. Also, the pudding tends to absorb a lot of the moisture in the sauce, so you may want to serve the pudding with some pouring cream, custard, or ice cream.
Makes 3-4 small but filling portions
Ingredients
Pudding:
30g (1oz) Butter, softened
60g (2oz) Caster Sugar
60g (2oz) Dark Chocolate
1 Large Egg
55g (2oz) Plain Flour
2 tsp Cocoa Powder
100g (3.5oz) Dried Cherries
tsp Baking Powder
Sauce
150ml (5 fl oz) Milk
30g (1oz) Butter
40g (1.5 oz) Dark Chocolate
1 tbsp Granulated Sugar
1 tbsp Golden Syrup
Method
Measure out the sauce ingredients first, and either heat gently in a small saucepan over a low heat for about 10 minutes, or heat in the microwave in suitable container for about 2 minutes at high power. Whisk the ingredients well to combine them and set aside.
Grease a 1.1 litre (2 pint) pudding basin. In a separate bowl, beat the butter and caster sugar together until pale and fluffy. Meanwhile, melt the chocolate by the usual method (in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water), and then stir it into the butter mixture. Beat in the egg thoroughly, and then sift the flour and cocoa into the bowl, and fold in thoroughly. Then stir in the cherries.
Pour the sauce into the greased pudding basin, and add the pudding mixture on top of this. Bake in a preheated oven at 180C (355F, Gas Mark 4) for about 40 minutes, and serve immediately.
Calories per portion: about 540 kcal
Fat per portion: about 28g
