I was looking around for a chocolate pudding recipe and when I found this one by Jamie Oliver I thought I’d give it a go, because it has the bonus of being gluten free. As you may know, despite living a very gluten filled life myself, I’m always on the look out for gluten free recipes, because I have a few relatives who are either coeliac or avoid gluten.
This recipe has also been posted relatively recently over at Just as Delish. If you’re interested in gluten free recipes, or recipes with a healthy slant, check it out.
Jamie’s recipe, originally featured in Jamie’s Kitchen
Begin by melting 60g of dark chocolate with 25mL (5 tsp) of strong black coffee (espresso, if you’re in my household!). I did this as usual in the microwave and a burst at 30 seconds on high was long enough to cause the chocolate to seize. As this is a tiny amount of chocolate, with liquid, be very careful if you’re using the microwave. Otherwise, just chop up the chocolate and pour over the piping hot coffee. Pour the mix into small ice cube trays and freeze.
I used 4″ ramekin dishes as my moulds. Jamie tells you to use 3″ pastry rings or dariole moulds. This makes me pretty sceptical about his quantities for this recipe because even though I halved things and was using larger moulds, I still had enough mixture left over to make a generous sized ‘muffin’ of pudding (the fourth ramekin having been broken some time ago!). So, whether you’re halving or making a full batch, make sure you have a couple of extra moulds in reserve!
Butter the moulds well and refrigerate.
Preheat the oven to 190°C (conventional oven, not fan).
To make the sponge, melt 160g of chocolate with 60g of butter (unsalted). When this mixture has cooled, add to it 3 egg yolks, 50g of ground almonds and 50g of rice flour*.
Whisk the 3 egg whites until soft peaks form and then add 100g of caster sugar and beat until stiff. Note – just because you may have used the KitchenAid while the baby is asleep previously, there is a massive difference between making some brownies using the flat beater and vigorously whisking egg whites on full speed …
Fold the egg whites into the chocolate mix and ensure everything is well combined.
Spoon some mixture into a mould, top with a frozen square of chocolate and coffee, and then cover with more mixture.
Bake for 18-20 minutes (if you’re using a larger mould, like me, you may want to extend that by 5 minutes or so). The puddings will puff up a little while baking and should be reasonably firm.
When done, remove from moulds while hot and serve immediately. We served with cream, because, well, if you’re doing pudding, you may as well do it properly.
While these puddings were nice they were … just that. I thought it was a lot of effort to go to for a dish that didn’t really stand out. I disliked the ‘just in time’ nature of the dish – if you were entertaining you’d spend the pause between dinner and dessert in the kitchen making these as there’s so little you can do in advance. Of course, unmoulding anything is always fraught with danger (and, in this case – massive fail – but I think my puddings were slightly underdone) but there’s no harm in serving this dish unmoulded. It looks fine in the ramekin.
There are other Jamie Oliver recipes I return to time and time again (his spinach and feta pie, and also his brilliant cheesecake recipe, which I haven’t yet written about). But this will not be one of them.
* As mentioned once or twice in other places, rice flour is readily available in Australian supermarkets. Just make sure you buy rice flour and NOT ground rice! Also, if you are cooking for people who have a medical issue with gluten, always check that any products like this are gluten free (100% white rice). You’d be surprised at the places where gluten crops up.