Saucy Hot Fudge Pudding

This chocolate pudding cake is, I do believe, the first chocolate dessert I ever made as a child growing up in Canada. I’d found a cocoa company recipe book (Fry’s possibly?) when I was around aged 12 and simply had to try it out. I’ve been making it regularly ever since. My original transcription of the recipe has become intelligible in my ancient notebook and it’s that good I had to rewrite in in a newer notebook collection. Now it’s on my blog to share with all you fine readers! It’s inexpensive to make as it uses store-cupboard ingredients, contains no eggs and hardly dirties any dishes at all! Mix the batter in the dish you intend to cook the pudding in – I use a 24 cm Le Crueset dish (a charity shop bargain at £1), and away you go – perfect comfort food!

This recipe employs a rather unusual technique in that boiling water is poured over cake batter which has first been sprinkled with a cocoa powder and sugar. During the cooking process the water soaks down into the bottom of the dish resulting in a deliciously chocolatey pudding beneath a fudgey cake topping. Serve with ice cream or lashings of double cream, curl up on the couch in your PJs with a bowl of this and a good book for a very civilised Saturday evening in. I’m not ashamed to admit that any leftovers make a very nice breakfast, cold, the next morning!

This recipe was selected by DD out of my notebook collection for Dom from Belleau Kitchen’s Random Recipes challenge #26. I don’t know how random the selection was because she can now read and the word ‘chocolate’ may have stood out significantly, but nonetheless, it was selected, I made it, we ate and enjoyed it and here’s the recipe for your perusal!