Chocolate Self-Saucing Pudding

Warm, gooey Chocolate Self-Saucing Pudding uses pantry staples for an eggless moist chocolate cake and a gooey sauce that thickens during baking making this a delicious dessert perfect for cooler nights.

Ingredients and substitutions for Chocolate Self-Saucing Pudding

• Plain flour: Plain gives the pudding it's cakey texture and you don't want to overmix the dough so is less dense. However, you can substitute with self-raising flour here and leave out the baking powder.
• Baking powder: This helps the chocolate pudding cake rise as it bakes so you will want to make sure you don't leave this out.
• Cocoa powder: A high quality natural cocoa powder works best here to help give the pudding and sauce it's deep chocolate flavor!
• Sugar: The best sugar here is superfine or caster which helps dissolve into the cake batter and sauce without adding any additional flavor. You could half and half the sugar with light brown sugar or raw sugar alongside the caster sugar.
• Butter: Butter is rubbed into this making it’s way throughout the pudding for a nice and light texture. Unsalted or salted works well here.
• Milk: The only wet ingredient, this helps bind the cake batter as well as keep the pudding moist. You could replace in equal measure with non dairy milk. 

See recipe card for quantities.

How to make Chocolate Self-Saucing Pudding:

Step 1: Dry ingredients: Sift your flour, baking powder and cocoa powder into a bowl before tossing in the sugar and rubbing in the butter until the mixture resembles rough breadcrumbs.

Step 2: Add the milk: Pour your milk into the well and stir until the mixture resembles a cake batter and no dry portions remain.

Step 3: Baking dish: Spoon the cake and spread out evenly into your baking dish.

Step 4: Prepare your sauce: Stir the sugar and cocoa powder into a pouring bowl adding in the hot water and stirring until no lumps remaining.

Step 5: Carefully pour over: Holding the back of a spoon over your the top of the batter, slowly pour over the hot chocolate sauce.

Step 6: Bake: Place in the preheated oven and bake until a skewer comes out clean.

Step 7: Serve: Spoon into your serving bowls, top with a scoop of ice cream or pouring cream and dig in!

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Chocolate Self-Saucing Pudding

Sylvie Taylor

Fudgy chocolate cake with a rich chocolate sauce that feels like a hot chocolate in cake form. This is perfect for those winter blues (and an easy recipe to make gluten free or vegan).

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 15 minutes mins

Cook Time 45 minutes mins

Total Time 1 hour hr

Course Puddings

Cuisine New Zealand

Servings 8

Calories 358 kcal

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

Pudding

• 320 grams / 2 cups plain flour
• 8 grams / 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 28 grams / ¼ cup cocoa powder
• 100 grams / 3.5 ounces butter cubed and room temperature
• 100 grams / ½ cup caster/superfine sugar
• 240 grams / 1 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Chocolate sauce

• 21 grams / 3 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 100 grams / ½ cup caster/superfine sugar
• 500 grams / 2 cups boiling water

Instructions

 

Pudding

• Grease a large baking dish and preheat the oven to 180°C/350F.
• Sift the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder into a bowl and stir to combine.
• Add the sugar and stir together.
• Toss in the cubed butter and rub into the mixture until it resembles fine breadcrumbs and holds as a clump in your hand, but is still loose enough to fall away at the edges.
• Make a well in the dry ingredients and add the milk and vanilla extract.
• Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients to form a loose dough.
• Spoon the mixture into the prepared dish, smoothing out on top and set aside while you make the sauce.

Chocolate Sauce

• Place the cocoa powder and sugar in a separate bowl and pour in the boiling water, stirring until the mixture is smooth.
• Hold the back of a large metal spoon over the top of the pudding and slowly pour the sauce evenly over the back of the spoon to guarantee the sauce is spread evenly over the cake.
• Bake for 45 minutes until a skewer comes out clean when tested.
• Remove and allow to cool for 5 minutes before serving up.
• Serve warm with pouring or whipped cream or scoops of ice cream.
• Dig in!

Notes

• Cocoa powder: A high quality cocoa powder works best here to help give the pudding and sauce it's deep chocolate flavor!
• Pouring jug: A jug that comfortably fits 500ml's/2 cups of liquid is needed for the sauce.
• Pouring the sauce over your cake batter: Doing so slowly on the back of a tablespoon ensures you don't create craters in your cake and don't overwhelm the batter with the hot water.
• You can make this vegan: Probably one of the easiest desserts to turn vegan thanks to not needing eggs here. Simply replace the butter and milk with dairy free alternatives in equal measure and your pudding will be delicious.
• Serve with: This is quite a rich dessert so it's best to serve with a thick drizzle of cream, whipped cream or scoops of ice cream.

Adapted from Edmond’s Cookbook

Nutrition

Calories: 358kcal

Keyword chocolate, eggless

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