Self-Saucing Chocolate Pudding

Pets'R'us's Note:

Chocolate, not many people who don't like it. This always goes down well, my husband likes it with soft whipped cream on the side. Easy to put together, you should end up with a cake topping and a puddle of sauce underneath that.

• Total Time: 1 hrs 10 mins
• Prep Time: 20 mins
• Cook Time: 50 mins

Ingredients:

Servings: 4

• 1 cup self-raising flour
• ¾ cup caster sugar
• 2 tablespoons good cocoa powder
• ½ cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 1 ounce melted butter
• ¾ cup brown sugar , firmly packed
• ¼ cup cocoa powder
• 1 ¾ cups hot water

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Grease an eight-cup capacity ovenproof dish, not too shallow.
3. Sift the flour, castor sugar and cocoa powder into a large bowl.
4. Combine the milk, essence and melted butter, add this and stir until smooth and combined.
5. Pour this mix into your prepared dish.
6. Combine the brown sugar and the rest of the cocoa powder; sift that evenly over the top.
7. Carefully, with love and a bit of patience, pour the hot water over the pudding mix.
8. Bake for approx 40- 50 minutes, or until the pudding feels firm to the touch.
9. If you want serve it dusted with icing/confectioners sugar.

Reviews

[evelyn/athens]

What a nice pudding! The only thing is that I would have liked a 'richer' taste - and I think that's from the addition of the water. Has anyone ever tried something similar using hot milk? I think it would make a world of difference in flavour. this is very good as is though and will be made very often.

[JustJanS]

I checked 3 similar recipes after reading the 2 reviews that wanted extra richness. This has more cocoa than any of those did, and thy all use water. They also all used an egg. I bit the bullet and added the egg as I couldn't have put it in the oven without it in the end. This was good, real comfort food for a cold night, but consider adding a large egg with the milk.

[jimstoic]

This is an amazingly simple and delicious recipe. Two caveats: (1) the cake part of the recipe, which starts on the bottom and floats to the top during baking, could not, at least for me, be "poured" into the prepared dish as per step 5 because it is more like a dough than a batter. It worked beautifully anyway. (2) I agree with the comment that the sauce part might be better if made with milk rather than water. Even skim milk or the addition of some nonfat dry milk might make it a little thicker. I baked mine in a standard loaf pan.