Chocolate, Chocolate . . . Everywhere . . .

Chocolate, chocolate everywhere,
On my face and in my hair.
In my ears and up my nose,
Stuck on all my favourite clothes.

I love chocolate, can you tell?
Sometimes I don’t feel so well!
I even see it when I sleep,
I count chocolates instead of sheep.
~Jake Randall

Happy Tuesday and Welcome to the Tuesday, July 15th edition of Tuesdays With Dorie, the one day a week that I get together with several hundred other backing aficionado's and make another delicious recipe from the best selling book, by Dorie Greenspan, entitled "Baking, from my home to yours."



This group just keeps going from strength to strength. What a lovely group of ladies to belong to. I am surprised each and every week by the quality of workmanship they produce and post on their blogs. In fact, I think that visiting and reading their experiences, not to mention looking at the delicious photos they post, can be held singularly responsible for the ever widening girth of my hips!

This week, Melissa from Its Melissas Kitchen has picked . . . Chocolate pudding! You can find it on pg. 383.




Mmmmmm . . . delicious chocolate pudding. I am a bit of a funny bird when it comes to chocolate. I hate chocolate milk, chocolate ice cream and chocolate milkshakes, but I love chocolate bars, chocolate cookies, chocolate cakes and brownies and I ADORE chocolate pudding!

Oddly enough I have never made chocolate pudding from scratch. My whole life's experience up to this point has been Jello Chocolate Pudding, either the cooked stuff or the instant stuff. I've always been totally happy with them and never desired to make it from scratch. I thought it would be a great thing to try so was very happy when Melissa picked this recipe. Thanks Melissa!



It was a very unusual recipe though. It used the blender almost all the way through. I'm the happy owner of a lovely Kitchen Aid Blender that I won by writing a letter into Sainsbury's magazine last year. My letter got picked as the Star Letter and I won the best prize ever, much better than a case of wine which is what most cooking magazines seem to give away, which would do me no good whatsoever, although I suppose I could sell it on the black market for a mitt full if I did win one, but I digress . . . where was I? . . .

oh yeh, Chocolate Pudding . . . blender . . . Does anyone out there know what happens when you put a hot ingredient into a blender and then press the on button without being prepared? Double points to the first one who answers correctly!




That's right! You end up with whatever you are trying to blend all over the counter, all over yourself, and, oddly enough, or not so oddly in my case, all over the ceiling. Yes . . . I forgot the first rule of blending. Never blend anything hot unless you put a towel over the lid and hold it firmly down!

Back to square one, after a few . . . ahem . . . choice words, which I will not repeat here, but really weren't all that bad as I am a Mormon after all, and I don't think saying things like Holy Macaroni, or Jumping Jehosaphat actually qualify as words which can turn the air blue!

After a most auspicious start I finally got pudding, but not pudding as I have always known it . . . I got a beautifully rich and silky concoction that soothes and almost sent me into ecstasy when I was cleaning out the pot. (one of the advantages of not having any children and having a husband who actually dislikes chocolate) I poured it into my dishes and popped some cling film on top and then waited overnight before I actually ate anything other than the scrapings.




I decided that I would top mine with a thin layer of Creme Fraiche and some crushed Cinder Toffee, or Sponge Toffee as it is called in North America, but not just any Cinder Toffee, Cinder Toffee that I would break into chunks and dip into chocolate before I crushed it . . . and so that's exactly what I did.

I turned a wonderfully luscious chocolate pudding into something spectacularly moreish! If you want the recipe for the chocolate pudding you will have to go HERE , but I am going to give you the Cinder Toffee recipe here.

Will I ever use boxed chocolate pudding mix again? Probably, when I am feeling singularly lazy and want a quick fix, but from now . . . on when I want a decadently gorgeous and sinfully perfect chocolate pudding, that makes you feel like you are doing something really bad when you are eating it . . . I will choose Dorie's recipe. It REALLY is the best!



*The World's Best Cinder Toffee*

Every child's delight this is a wonderful concoction that magically turns from a thick syrup into a heavenly light sponge of delicious sweet confection once you add the magic ingredient . . . baking soda. One feels a bit like a mad scientist when they are making this. It's soooo sweet and soooo good!

50g salted butter, plus extra for greasing
300ml water
4 teaspoons malt vinegar
3 tablespoons golden syrup
450g granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 bar of good quality chocolate, *optional (I use green and blacks organic milk chocolate)

Grease a large baking tin well with butter and set it aside. (mine was an 11 by 7 inch tin)

Place the butter, water, and vinegar into a large saucepan. Heat until the butter has melted. Add the golden syrup and sugar. Heat and stir until the sugar completely dissolves. Once it has dissolved and it is all mixed well together, STOP stirring. Clip your candy thermometer onto the side of the pan if you have one. Bring the mixture to the boil and allow to boil without stirring it until the mass reaches the hard crack stage on your candy thermometer. (if you don't have a candy thermometer a teaspoon of the molten toffee dropped into a saucer of cold water at hard crack stage will form brittle strands and crack when you try to shape it)

Be very careful as this mixture is very hot and can be dangerous. This is not a recipe for children to be making.

Remove the mixture from the heat and carefully stir in the baking soda. It will immediately froth up. Keep stirring gently until the bubbles begin to subside. Working very quickly, pour it into the prepared pan. Wait for between ten and twenty minutes until the mixture is set up but still warm, and then knock it out of the pan and break the toffee into pieces. Lay these pieces out on a wire rack until completely cooled, then transfer to an air-tight container (or your mouth).

If you wish to coat yours in chocolate, break up your chocolate into small bits and melt it in a bowl set over simmering water. Dip each piece of cooled cinder toffee into the melted chocolate to coat, and then place the coated pieces on a rack to dry completely before storing in an air tight container.

Next weeks recipe will be Cherry Rhubarb Cobbler on page 415, as chosen by Amanda from Like Sprinkles on a Cupcake. Don't forget to hop on over to the Blog Roll and check out all the other delicious versions of this lovely chocolate pudding!!