Chocolate Self-Saucing Pudding

I seem to be getting further and further behind in my posts. I wrote this one last week!

Although the day is bright, the sky is blue and spring can't be far away, we woke to a white snow filled world again this morning and it is feeling distinctly wintery. Unless we have friends over, puddings are a rare event in our house (cakes don't count) but after toiling away sorting out a huge backlog of papers and then getting chilled when venturing out to do the shopping, comfort food was what we needed! Amazingly, I have only made this pudding once before and that must have been at least a decade ago. I remember it as being fairly successful, so not sure why I've failed to repeat the experience until now. The recipe comes from The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook a book I picked up in a remaindered bookshop many years ago. Unlike others I've picked up on a similar whim, I do actually use this one, however occasionally! As there were only two of us I didn't use the full quantities given, but as I couldn't do an exact split, the ratios ended up being rather different to the original recipe. I also fancied spicing it up a bit with cinnamon. This is what I did:

• Melted 2oz unsalted butter.
• Beat 2 duck eggs into 4 fl oz milk.
• Sifted 4oz wholemeal flour, 1 level tsp baking powder, 1 tbsp cocoa and 1 tsp ground cinnamon into a bowl.
• Stirred in 4oz granulated sugar.
• Made a well in the centre and poured in the egg mixture followed by the melted butter and mixed it all together.
• Poured this into a greased pyrex soufflé dish.

• Broke up 100g bar of dark chocolate 85% and placed in pan with 8 fl oz milk and 3 fl oz water.
• Stirred over low heat until melted and smooth.
• Poured over sponge mixture and baked for 30 mins at 180C (gas 4).
• and baked in a preheated oven at 180C for 30 mins.
• Dusted with a tsp of icing sugar before serving.

This saucy pudding was as good as I remembered it and certainly did its job well in providing comfort. Despite the large quantity of liquid, the sponge soaked up the majority of the sauce, leaving a light but moist sponge with deliciously gooey patches welling up through it. The dark chocolate sauce, having no extra sweetner, made for a rich but not overly sweet pudding - the way I like them. We had ours with delicious local organic creme fraiche.