Chocolate Fondant Puddings

Last night it was all about comfort food. I'll write about the main course presently (sausage casserole... MADE TOTALLY AWESOME BY THE FACT THAT IT WAS COOKED IN MY AWESOME NEW RED FLAMEPROOF CASSEROLE DISH!!! Oh... I said awesome twice... well, I'm excited about it!), but it's not as exciting as what we had for dessert.  I'm going to apologise in advance for the orientation of the photos, and also of their quality - when I'm cooking in a semi-determined fashion at night, indoors, with relatively poor lighting, there is simply no point in pansying about with your camera on full manual. I needed the flash, and CBF mucking about with flash compensation and white balance and so forth. Mainly because I haven't had a chance to play with it just yet. And also because I was feeling lazy.

Of course, after a casserole served with mashed potato, dessert was a little on the rich side and so my stomach sloshed all night, but I would make it again. Only, next time, I would halve the serving size.

CHOCOLATE FONDANT RECIPE (Donna Hay - No Time to Cook)

200g dark chocolate, melted

60g butter, chopped,

2 eggs

2tbsp plain flour

1/3c brown sugar

Cream or icecream to serve.

Preheat oven to 180oC (160oC fan forced).

Melt the chocolate, and try not to whinge about how hard it is to melt chocolate. Double boilers aren't that complicated. Note that here I have opted to use a small saucepan and a large cereal bowl. Seriously. If you don't have this equipment then get the heck out of the kitchen!!! Also, I've heard tell that it's not that hard to melt chocolate in the microwave, but I personally have had little success with this and always end up burning it.

Whack it all in the blender. Blend until smooth.

Transfer mixture into 2 greased 1c capcity heat proof (= almost anything made of china that is in your kitchen cupboard, including but not limited to) dishes/ bowls/ ramekins/ mugs/ whatevers. I have resisted the urge to rush out and purchase one-cup capacity ramekins/souffle dishes because I already own 3/4c capacity ramekins/souffle dishes, and if you don't care too much about presentation, these deceptively large bowls that were already in my posession (how many Ss should be in that??) fit the bill.

Bake for 18-20 minutes or until puddings are cooked on the outside and just set on the inside (which means that you'll get a bit of molten chocolate on your knife when you stick it in, which seems to be correct as far as the photos in the cookbook matching my final product suggests).

Stand for 10 mins (I suspect this is so that you don't sustain serious sugar burns to your tongue) then turn out onto a plate and serve with cream or icecream. Or go wild and have both. It just might help you to forget the fact that you just ate half a block of dark chocolate all to yourself in one sitting...

Dead easy. Super impressive. You know, assuming you remember to wipe the plate clean of crumbs and perhaps garnish it with a sprig of mint and perhaps a wee artistic drizzle of caramel sauce or cream or... or maybe even Toquay! Yummm... And it would never have occurred to me to use a blender to make a pudding (although this does mean having to clean a blender... which is okay if you like licking spatulas!). But I suggest halving the serving sizes because 1c is definitely too much for such a rich pudding. I would assume that to do this you might drop the temperature by ten or twenty degrees and have a look at them after 12-14 minutes so that they didn't dry out (but don't quote me). Also, if you use oversized ramekins for them like I did, I'd recommend leaving it in the bowl so that you can drown it in icecream and/or cream, thus negating the need to have a glass of milk by your side as you eat it.

NOTE TO SARA: These are not the puddings you requested the recipe for, but these are how I actually expected those particular puddings to turn out! Both recipes are by the same cook, though, so perhaps they managed to mix them up...?