Puddings
- Unsalted butter softened for greasing
- Plain flour for dusting
- 350 grams couverture milk chocolate buds
- 4 Eggs
- 125 ml pouring cream
- 50 grams unsalted butter at room temperature cut to 1 cm cubes
Grease 6 x 125 ml dariole moulds with softened butter using a pastry brush, dust with flour and refrigerate until needed.
Put chocolate in a heatproof bowl and melt over a saucepan of simmering water, stirring until melted and free flowing.
While the chocolate is melting, break eggs into a bowl and whisk gently together. Bring cream to the boil in a saucepan over a medium heat, set aside and cool for 5 minutes.
Add several spoons of melted chocolate to the egg and gently mix through, then slowly, gently mix through the rest of the chocolate.
Add the cream and gently mix through. Add the cubes of unsalted butter and mix until melted.
Cover the mixture with cling wrap and allow to set for an hour in the refrigerator until fudgy.
Spoon the mixture into the chilled dariole moulds filling almost to the top and refrigerate for 30 minutes or overnight.
Preheat oven to 200 C and evenly space moulds onto a baking tray and bake for 15 minutes. The puddings are ready when the edges crack and there is a soft dome shape in the centre.
Allow to cool for 3 minutes before carefully up turning puddings onto the serving plates.
Creme Anglaise
- 1 scant teaspoon vanilla paste
- 1 cup of milk
- 5 egg yolks
- 1/3 cup of sugar
Add vanilla paste and ½ the sugar to the milk in a saucepan and simmer to dissolve. Bring to the boil then take off the heat.
Whisk the egg yolks with the remaining sugar in a bowl to blend. Gradually whisk in 1/3 of the hot milk to temper the yolks. Return mixture to the saucepan and to a low heat. Stir the custard with a wooden spoon until it thickens and coats the back of the spoon. Set aside.
Raspberry Sauce
- 2 punnets of fresh raspberries or a 300 gram packet of frozen raspberries
- ½ cup castor sugar
- ½ cup water
Cook raspberries and sugar in asaucepan with water until the sugar dissolves and the raspberries are broken down. Reduce for about 5 minutes or until the mixture is syrupy. Strain the mixture through a sieve pressing through the seeds with a spoon to make a smooth viscous sauce. Divide into equal portions, one for the ‘raspberry swirl’ in the ice cream and one for the plates.
Cheats Ice cream
- 1 litre of good quality vanilla bean ice-cream
- 125 grams of couveture white chocolate buds
- One portion of the raspberry sauce reserved as above
Melt the white chocolate in a heat proof bowl over a saucepan of barely simmering water using a spatula to stir. When ready keep warm with the flame off.
Place ice-cream in a large food processer and churn quickly to a semi frozen state. Pour the warm melted white chocolate through the top of the food processor without letting the ice-cream melt.
Place the ice-cream in a round stainless steel bowl and let reset in the freezer until it is still manageable.
Fold the raspberry sauce through the semi-frozen-but-still-resistantice- cream so it suspends itself in the mixture.
Place the ice cream back into the original ice cream container and pour a little extra raspberry over the top. Store in the freezer until ready to serve.
Garnish
- Gold leaf
- Rose petals
- Remaining raspberry sauce
- Fresh raspberries
To plate up. When the pudding is upturned on the plate, pour around crème anglaise, then raspberry sauce. Use tweezers to place gold leaf on the top of the chocolate pudding then scatter with rose petals and fresh raspberries. Finally add a scoop of the ice cream.
