Daring Bakers’ Very Chocolate Pudding

The April 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Esther of The Lilac Kitchen. She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding using, if possible, a very traditional British ingredient: suet.

The two basic types of British puddings are a suet crust pudding with a filling or a suet sponge pudding. Examples of a pudding with a crust are a steak and kidney pudding or a Sussex pond pudding and examples of the sponge pudding are spotted dick, Christmas pudding and college pudding.

Well, I wasn’t very daring this month and you won’t find any suet in this post. In case you’re wondering, suet is the hard but flaky fat found on the inside of a cow or sheep around the kidneys and that area of the body. Did I hear you say Ewwwwwww. No, that was probably me. I told you, I wasn’t very daring this month.

Luckily we were allowed to use substitutes for the suet in our British puddings and even better, we were allowed to make a savory or a sweet version. If you’ve visited my blog much you’ll know that, of course, I picked the sweet version.

I picked a rich, fudgey, lick-your-plate-clean, Very Chocolate Pudding from the very British Pudding Club website made with butter. They recommended serving it with a sauce and I thought since there was so much chocolate going on that a Creme Anglaise sauce would be perfect and it was.

I added the strawberry just for the picture, but after I had a bite of strawberry and a bite of Chocolate Pudding with Creme Anglaise sauce all at the same time, I decided it was a fabulous combination and diced up some strawberries to serve with the pudding.

This pudding reminded me of molten lava cakes that are so popular now, only without a liquid chocolate center. It had a very soft almost gooey texture in the middle – perhaps I should have steamed it longer, but it set up more after it cooled and everyone loved it. Did I mention I licked my plate clean.

Daring Bakers’ Very Chocolate Pudding

Print Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/4 cup cocoa
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/3 cup chocolate chips

Directions:

Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Sift the flour and cocoa together and add to the creamed mixture with the egg, a little at a time, beating well between each addition. Finally, stir in half the chocolate chips. Place the remaining chocolate chips in a greased 1.5 quart pudding bowl before adding the mixture. Steam for 1 ½ hours. Turn out and serve with, inevitably, Chocolate Sauce. Custard or Extra Thick are also wonderful with this pudding.

I followed the recipe for Creme Anglaise on Cafe Lynnylu, except I substituted vanilla bean paste.

Visit the Daring Kitchen Recipe Achieve for the recipes and (tips on steaming) and the Daring Bakers Blogroll to see the wide variety of British Puddings other Daring Bakers created. Thanks Esther for helping take me out of my comfort zone and learning to bake with steam.

FYI: Steamed puddings are generally steamed in a pudding bowl which is covered with waxed paper and foil and tied with kitchen string. The pudding is lowered into simmering water which should come halfway up the sides of the bowl. The bowl sits on a trivet, scrunched foil or even a folded tea towel in the pot so it does not come into contact with the direct heat. The pot is covered with the lid and the pudding allowed to steam as required. Do not let the pot boil dry. You can also steam in a crockpot or a steamer.

The Pudding Club