Self saucing chocolate pudding

This pudding borders on witchcraft and I bet everyone who makes it for the first time puts it in the oven thinking, ‘this will never work’.  But guess what?  It does!  The idea of pouring hot water over a batter and the oven sorting it all out is hard to believe but by the time you take the finished pud out of the oven there will be a lovely sponge risen on the top, and a thick, rich chocolate sauce at the bottom of the dish.  

It really doesn’t look promising going into the oven (apologies for all the mess and smears around the bowl – I was having one of those uncoordinated days where everything goes where it shouldn’t!):

I particularly liked where the sauce bubbled up on top of the sponge and set into a crusty topping.  The sponge and sauce contrasted with vanilla ice cream was the perfect dish – hot, cold, multiple textures and bold flavours.

This is a real ‘stick to the ribs’ pudding reminiscent of that chocolate sponge you sometimes got for school dinners.  The chocolate sauce is more chocolatey than school dinners chocolate custard (not that I didn’t love school dins chocolate custard!)

The other good thing about this dessert is that it takes barely 10 minutes to get it ready for the oven.  I do recommend standing your baking dish on a tray to catch any spills.  Some of my chocolate sauce did decide to erupt out of the pud like a rather limp Versuvius.  Mmmm, chocolate lava!

Ingredients

For the batter:
150g self raising flour
165g caster sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
125ml milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
30g unsalted butter, melted

For the topping:
150g dark brown sugar
4 tablespoons cocoa powder
425ml hot water

Method

Preheat the oven to 190°C/fan oven 170°C/375°F/gas mark 5.

Grease a 1.5-2 litre oven proof dish with butter.

Place the flour, sugar and cocoa in a large bowl and mix together.

Beat in the milk, vanilla and butter until you have a smooth batter.

Spoon into the prepared dish and level the surface.

Now make the topping: Stir together the brown sugar and cocoa powder making sure there are no lumps.

Scatter over the top of the batter.

Pour the hot water over the top at a gentle speed so as not to disturb everything – using the back of a spoon to break the flow helps.

Place on a baking sheet in the oven (this will catch any sauce that bubbles up) and bake for 50 minutes, during which time the sponge will rise to the top and the liquid will be at the bottom of the dish transformed into a thick chocolate sauce.

Serve from the oven with vanilla ice cream.

Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have created.

Eat.