Chocolate Pudding

A couple of days ago I was going to post a chocolate pudding recipe, but I wasn't completely happy with my recipe as I wanted to do some tweaking. After another couple of hours in the kitchen I'm now ready to share my recipe.

I'm not a very confident baker, I normally follow recipes and tweak them with ingredients I have to hand, but my chocolate pudding recipe was started from scratch. I thought to myself if I can create a savoury recipe as I go then it shouldn't be that difficult to 'wing' a sweet recipe.

So how did I know it was going to turn out alright? I kept tasting the batter! In fact the recipe below should make 4 chocolate puddings but as I kept tasting the batter I only made 3! Plus I filled the ramekins too much, I really wasn't expecting the puddings to rise quite as much as they did. When I took them out of the oven they reminded me of chocolate souffles, they had risen that much! 

If you haven't got much time and you're not a confident baker then this recipe is for you, its really easy and it doesn't take long to cook!

Be warned though these puddings are extremely rich and very filling!

Ingredients 

120g Plain flour
30g Cocoa powder
1 Tsp Baking powder
½Tsp Bicarbonate of soda
¼ Tsp Salt
80g Muscovado sugar
8 Squares of dark chocolate
2 Tbsp Maple syrup
50ml Light olive oil
150ml Vanilla soya yoghurt

Method

Sieve the first 5 ingredients into a bowl and add the sugar. Stir to combine.

Add the last three ingredients to another bowl and whisk so that all the ingredients are combined.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix until you have a batter.

Grease 4 ramekin dishes and dust with flour.

Place 2 Tbsp of the batter into each ramekin dish and top with 2 squares of the dark chocolate. Add another 2-3 Tbsp of the batter on the top and smooth over the surface.

Place in a preheated oven at a moderate temperature (my oven temperature marks have been rubbed off so I never know what temperature my oven is!) and bake for 15 minutes.

Remove from the oven and place a skewer into each of the puddings, don't go into the middle though as this is where the melted chocolate is! If the skewer comes out clean you're ready to go. If not place back in the oven and bake for another 5 minutes they really shouldn't need any longer than this.

Serve with extra vanilla yoghurt and grated chocolate.