I fancied a little chocolate pudding yesterday, one of those ones that makes it own sauce. I found a recipe and set too. I’ve changed it a bit, cutting the sugar by half as it seemed too much, and it was.
What do I need to make an old fashioned self saucing chocolate pudding
Priced at Aldi.co.uk July 2024. Costs 21p per serving
To serve 6, you will need
- For the base
- 150g self raising flour or plain with a tsp of baking powder
- 150g sugar, ordinary granulated is what I use, but any kind will work. Stronger, browner sugars will add their flavour
- 30g cocoa, not drinking chocolate which has dried milk and sugar added
- 125ml milk
- Tsp vanilla extract. At the rme of writing, this adds 10p to the cost and can be omitted if you don’t have any
- 30g melted butter. Use margarine if that is what you have
- Topping
- 100g sugar
- 60g cocoa
- 425ml hot water
How to make self saucing chocolate pudding
Mix the flour, sugar and cocoa. Melt the butter and add the vanilla and milk. Mix into the flour mixture and stir well. Pour the mixture into a 2 litre oven proof dish. I added a touch more milk as the mixture was quite thick.
Mix the remaining sugar and cocoa together and sprinkle over the top of the batter.
Now trickle over the hot water.
Bake at 190c for about half an hour. It will probably look as if it needs more cooking when you take it out, but it is the sauce bubbling about. I’ve found that even the ramekins take 25-30 minutes
Serve on its own, with a splash of cream or a dollop of ice cream. It’s seriously good!
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To serve 2, I use 2 x 120ml ramekins or a small dish with a 240ml capacity
Verdict
This really hit the spot. I just had a little, which was all I wanted, with a trickle of cream.
I reduced the sugar right down from traditional recipes and it was fine, I didn’t notice at all, it was more than sweet enough. Recipes for this often use dark brown sugar, but I didn’t want to.
I used a shallow dish, if you use a deeper one, it may take longer to bake through. The original recipe I was looking at said to bake it for 50 minutes, which would have been far too long for mine in this dish.
I deliberately omitted using any egg, as this is a pudding that many will want to scale up or down and doing that with an egg is difficult!
Hollow legged teenagers could have seconds, it’s good cold, will sit in the fridge quite happily for a few days and it looks like it would freeze alright as well.
Other chocolate recipes you might like
Chocolate Muffins. Quick, easy, great for packups and very cheap
Ingredients
Base
- 150 g self-raising flour value flour, 55p/1.5kg, 5p
- 150 g sugar 64p/1kg, 10p
- 30 g cocoa £1.69/250g, 20p
- 125 ml milk 99p/2.27 litres, 5p
- 1 tsp vanilla extract £1.29/35ml, 18p
- 30 g butter melted, £1.18/250g, 14p
Topping
- 100 g sugar 64p/1kg, 6p
- 60 g cocoa £1.69/250g, 40p
- 425 ml hot water
Instructions
Base
- Mix the flour, sugar and cocoa.150 g self-raising flour, 150 g sugar, 60 g cocoa
- Melt the butter and add the vanilla and milk.125 ml milk, 30 g butter, 1 tsp vanilla extract
- Mix into the flour mixture and stir well.
- Pour the mixture into a 2 litre oven proof dish.
Topping
- Mix the remaining sugar and cocoa together and sprinkle over the top of the batter.30 g cocoa, 100 g sugar
- Now trickle over the hot water.425 ml hot water
Bake
- Bake at 190c for about half an hour. It will probably look as if it
needs more cooking when you take it out, but it is the sauce bubbling
about. I’ve found that even the ramekins take 25-30 minutes - Serve on its own, with a splash of cream or a dollop of ice cream. It’s seriously good!
Equipment Needed
Notes
Nutrition
Great! It’s so easy isn’t it. Haven’t made it for a while for my husband, perhaps it will go on the meal plan next week!
Wow i love this pudding. The first time i did i left it in the oven too long it was good but a little dry. This time i was careful and it only took 30 minutes in a shallow dish. I did mix the topping before pouring it on. My 14 year old son loves it too. Thanks so much.
Excellent, glad you found it easy too
Served this for friends and there were clean bowls all round! Thanks for the recipe, it was very easy.
Ooh, that sounds really good!
Hi Lesley. I don’t think it would work to mix everything together; it wouldn’t separate into sponge and sauce. However, an old fashioned pudding here in Australia is Lemon Delicious, which does separate as it bakes. Everything goes into the baking dish together, but it is necessary to separate the eggs, beat the whites and fold them into the batter before baking, so it’s actually slightly more work than the chocolate pud. It is, as its name suggests, delicious. This is the recipe I use:
Lemon Delicious
1 tablespoon butter, melted
3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons SR flour
juice and rind of 1 large lemon
1 cup milk
2 eggs, separated
Put all ingredients other than egg whites in a bowl.
Put the whites in another bowl.
Beat the whites until stiff.
Beat ingredients in first bowl until smooth. (No need to wash beaters)
Fold whites into batter gently
Pour into greased baking dish (4-5 cup capacity)
Place dish in a larger one of warm water
Bake at 180C 45-60 minutes. (Depends on how deep your dish is)
Stand for 10 minutes before serving to allow sauce to thicken.
Can also be eaten warm or cold.
oh did I miss off the quantity? Thanks,changed it now.
glad you liked it, much much too easy to have more than a sixth!
We tried this last night for dinner with the last of some yellow sticker cherries on the side and it was lovely- it made 4 portions for us (but we’re greedy pudding eaters!). As a small note, you’ve missed out the quantity of cocoa powder in the topping (I just worked it based on your costing in the main recipe). Thanks for such a great recipe, we’ll be making it again, it was great to have a pudding made purely from on hand storecupboard ingredients!
It was! I need to scale it down to cater for two, all those leftovers are much too tempting!
I’ll stick to your receipe. It sounds and looks delicious.
No Lesley, I haven’t tried mixing all the ingredients together, but that would be so much easier. I may try and experiment next weekend when it is less hectic here.
Susan, Sarah, what I am wondering is if I could mix ALL the ingredients together. So the batter ingredients AND the topping ingredients, all in one go, in one bowl
Ever tried that?
Maria – I’ve been wondering if I could make one with raisins in, so I’ll have a play at some point and see if I can get one to work
It’s fine to mix the sugar and cocoa for the sauce into the hot water. You can also do this in the same bowI as the pudding mixture once that has been scraped in to its baking dish. I’ve done it that way for years. A favourite with my family, and so economical. I love your site and your recipes.
We make a microwave version of this occasionally, that too has 2 steps regarding cocoa & sugar mix then the water. I am also curious if I can combine all of them first then add to the top of the pudding. Our decision to have this is usually last minute hence using a microwave version, not the best time to experiment. I like serving it with sour cream or creme fresh or natural yoghurt depending on what we have in.
I look forward to your updates. I’m now craving this for breakfast.
When my children were young, they loved this kind of self-saucing pud. I often made a similar one to this as well as a lemon one, and also a pudding that effectively became a baked raisin sponge pudding with egg custard underneath. I found the recipe in a Victorian cookery book that I bought at a jumble sale and which, unfortunately, I lost at some point. The pudding was called “Hunter’s Pudding”. I’ve looked online since to find the recipe. There are plenty out there with the same or a similar name, and they tend to contain dried fruit, but none of them seem to be self-saucing. Many are steamed or boiled rather than baked and others recommend serving with custard which was unnecessary with the pudding that I used to make.