Why limit yourself to a normal bread and butter pudding when you can cross the boundaries and experiment? This is the perfect dessert for a cosy night in after a stressful week or for a meal with some friends who share your love for an intense, indulgent and awarding chocolate pudding.
Recipe freely adapted from the Bread & butter chocolate pudding in the Gu Chocolate Cookbook (Collins).
Ingredients
4 pains au chocolat
75ml milk
150g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids or more), chopped
300ml double cream
100g caster sugar
2 large eggs
Method
- Mix the milk and the cream in a medium saucepan and bring to the boil on a medium heat. Once it has reached the boiling point, take off the heat and drop in the chocolate morsels. Leave for a couple of minutes.
- Using a spoon or a whisk, mix the cream with the chocolate so as to obtain a dark, glossy and silky liquid. Leave to cool for a good 5-10 minutes.
- Cut the pains au chocolat across the middle so as to obtain three slices out of each. Pile them in a single layer in an ovenproof dish.
- In a jug, mix the two eggs with the sugar.
- Once the dark chocolate mixture has cooled off a bit, whisk in the eggs and the sugar and mix thoroughly to combine.
- Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius (140 for fan ovens).
- Pour the chocolate custard over the pains au chocolat slowly, so as to allow the pastry cases to absorb some of it.
- Put in the oven for 35-40 minutes, until the top is well set.
Tips
- To personalise the pudding even more, you can add sultanas, raisins or orange zest to the custard.
- If you’re really keen, try adding some white chocolate chips for extra indulgence.
- I bake my pudding until set and not gooey. If you prefer a bit of softness in the middle, take your pudding out of the oven 10 minutes earlier than indicated.
- As in the case of bread and butter puddings, using stale (not mouldy, please) pains au chocolat will result in a tastier pudding.
Baking with Attitude 