Dessert <3

[lucymonster]

Last night I committed the minor sacrilege of altering my great grandmother's self-saucing chocolate pudding recipe by throwing in a couple of handfuls of frozen cherries. I often like to serve it with coulis, but it's always felt a bit against the spirit of the thing to make a whole extra sauce for a self-saucing pudding. Adding the fruit straight into the batter yields much the same flavour for a lot less work.

I also mixed in some dark choc chips, which made it very decadent. Overall, a triumph. 10/10 would lovingly defy Grandma again.

Comments

[osprey_archer]

HDU post this without providing a recipe, that sounds completely delicious and now I want to try it! (A special dessert teleportation machine would also be acceptable.)

[lucymonster]

You're right, that was thoughtless of me! I tragically don't have a dessert teleporter (fucking dessert penpals, can you imagine, it would be the best) but here's the recipe. In Australian cup measures, but the difference is only small and it's a very forgiving recipe, so I wouldn't stress too much about conversions.

Grandma's self-saucing chocolate pudding
Pudding:
60g butter
1 cup SR flour
1 egg
vanilla essence or extract
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 level dessertspoons cocoa

Sauce:
1/2 cup sugar (brown sugar gives a nicer flavour imo)
2 dessertspoons cocoa
1 1/2 cups hot water

Directions:
Cream butter and sugar, add egg and vanilla. Fold in dry ingredients alternating with the milk.

Pour into greased ovenproof dish and put sugar and cocoa for the sauce on top. Pour over the hot water.

Cook 35-40 mins at 180 celsius. Serve with cream or ice cream.

Lucy's variant:
I threw a cup or so of cherries and a handful of dark choc chips in after folding in the milk and flour. It ended up needing around 15 minutes extra cooking time - a skewer should come out coated in sticky crumbs.

If it's ever relevant, it also come out fairly decent gluten-free. The texture's never quite as good, but I swap all the white sugar for brown sugar, 1/4 of the flour for almond meal, and the flavour's still spot on.

[osprey_archer]

Thank you!!! I have converted this to American measures (why don't we measure things in dessertspoons??) and will give it a try once I've finished my current pan of brownies. What size pan do you use for the pudding?

[lucymonster]

Ack, sorry! I opened this notification while my dish was in the dishwasher, planned to reply once it was done so I could measure it, then it all slipped my mind. I normally use a 1.5 litre casserole dish with a ~20cm diameter, about 6cm deep. It needs to cook with the lid on, and you want a bit of room in the top of the dish or else your sauce might overflow.

[osprey_archer]

I'll try it in my corningware on account of that's the only ovensafe dish I have with a lid (I've got a shallow one and a deep one, so probably one of them will work...) and report back!

[lucymonster]

I look forward to hearing how it goes! :D