Microwave chocolate pudding – review

27 Feb 2010 6 Comments

by Umm Ibrahim in Chocolate, Desserts, Recipe review Tags: Chocolate, dessert, Nigella Lawson, recipe

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I wanted to try Nigella Lawson’s recipe for Microwave Chocolate Pudding… Today was the day and the children were pretty gleeful when they noticed me in the kitchen grating chocolate and getting cream and butter from the fridge. My 6 year old son was excited too and came to offer his help. I grated 200g of Lindt dark chocolate using the food processor and proceeded to add butter, vanilla essence, a little Italian 00 flour, cream and eggs and whipped it all together as he looked on and then he helped me to spoon the runny  batter into a microwavable bowl. We had a taste of the batter from the food processor and agreed that it was indeed very yummy.

The bowl was covered with cling film and popped into the microwave for 5 minutes and we waited in anticipation.

When I broke the cling film and peered into the bowl, my immediate thought was that the ‘pudding’ did not look very appealing. It had shrunk away from the edges of the bowl and the top looked rather pallid and unappetising. I covered the bowl with a plate and left the pudding to rest for 10 minutes.

I called the kids who arrived rather excitedly, we dished up and added a generous dollop of cream to the top of each portion… the verdicts were as follows:

• I found the cake heavy, very closed textured, slightly rubbery (maybe it was overcooked…), too rich (even for a chocolaholic like myself) and generally unpudding-like.
• 6 year old son came back and told me it smells nice but tastes yucky.
• 14 year old daughter complained a couple of hours later that she felt sick and that my pudding was to blame. (Love teenagers )  
• Wordless 12 year old daughter just left it after eating all the cream that was on top of it.
• 9 year old daughter said it’s horrible and went for the strawberries that were in the fridge instead.
• 3 year old daughter took one look at the pudding and disappeared (without her portion).

So, I think I can safely say that it was an unrivalled failure and will not be trying that recipe again! I think the words microwave and pudding in the same sentence should have rung alarm bells in my head but the presence of all those good ingredients made me think it could be a success.

Sorry Nigella but it’s a unanimous thumbs down here.