chocolate, almond & pear puddings

Isn't it amazing the impact food styling and photography can have on the desire to try a certain recipe? The Indulgence Series from Murdoch Books does both of these things faultlessly. With each new release in this series, I become overwhelmed. Flicking from cover to cover results in sensory overload. I feel guilty picking just one recipe to be the first one I try, but it's never the last. These books are just perfection.

There are few things more comforting to me that eating a hot pudding on a Winter's night. I've been doing this a lot lately, it seems, despite it presently being only the eleventh day of the season. This recipe will bring you all a pudding should on a cold, lazy night. It's quick to mix, quick to bake, and uses ingredients I usually always have handy in my pantry. Would also go wonderfully with a chocolate fudge sauce...

Ingredients (makes 6 individual puddings)
Recipe from Indulgence Chocolate

1/3 cup golden syrup
8 tinned pear halves
60 gms plain flour
30 gms unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tsps baking powder
1 tsp ground allspice
55 gms ground almonds
3 eggs, at room temperature
165 gms brown sugar
60 mls milk
1/3 cup golden syrup, extra, warmed slightly
double cream, to serve

Preheat oven to 180C/170C fan-forced. Grease eight holes of a non-stick giant muffin tin/s, and line the bases of each hole with a round of baking paper. Spoon the golden syrup among the holes to cover the bases. Place a pear half, cut side down, in each.

Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking powder and allspice into a medium sized bowl, then stir in the ground almonds.

Beat the eggs and the sugar with an electric mixer until pale and creamy. Slowly pour in the milk, then add the flour mixture, folding until just combined.

Spoon the pudding mixture over the pears. Bake for 25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of each cake come out clean. Allow to cool in the tin for 3 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack. Immediately remove the baking paper and transfer the puddings to serving plates. Drizzle with extra golden syrup and serve with a dollop of double cream.

I've kept my leftover puddings in the fridge for a couple of days, and they're still great. I imagine they would also freeze okay, but I doubt it will ever have to come to that.

Recommended baking soundtrack - Wild Nothing - Gemini.