This pudding actually contains no explicitly added sugar – through a happy forgetful incident but it worked out well nonetheless. The sweetness comes from the chocolate & pears. If you do have a slightly sweeter tooth, serve with a good vanilla ice cream or custard.

Use whichever chocolate you have lying around – I used half milk and half ‘dark with a hint of sea salt’. Whilst I wouldn’t suggest you need to trek to the shops to hunt this out specifically, it was really well received despite the no-sugar incident.

This is also another one which would work well on the move – easy to wrap individual portions once cool.

Serves 6

Ingredients

Bread Crumbs	120	grams
Milk	120	millilitres
Butter	50	grams
Eggs	2
Chocolate	50	grams
Pears	3	fruit
Chocolate Powder	1	tablespoon
Ginger	1	teaspoon
Flour (Any)	1	tablespoon
Baking Powder	1	teaspoon

 

Main Equipment

1. Approx 30x15cm oven proof dish
2. Food processor to make bread crumbs (grating or roughly chopping will work if you don’t have a processor)

 

Method

1. Make the bread crumbs by placing cubed stale bread in a food processor and pulsing until you have medium-coarse crumbs.
2. Warm the milk & butter in saucepan over a low heat, just to the point that the butter melts. Allow to cool slightly – you don’t want to add the eggs to a hot mixture.
3. Add the milk to the bread crumbs.
4. Mix in the eggs.
5. Roughly chop the chocolate, leaving a few bigger chunks makes for nice surprise when eating. Stir the chocolate into the bread mixture.
6. Peel, core & roughly chop the pears. Don’t do before you are ready as they will go brown quickly. Stir into the mixture.
7. Add the drinking chocolate powder.
8. Add the ginger if liked – more if really liked. Taste the mixture to get the right flavour.
9. Add a little flour (anything you have to hand) just to dry the mixture slightly – depending on how moist your bread was you may need more or less than the tablespoon suggested. It should be roughly a thick porridge texture. Don’t worry too much – the cooking time can be adjusted to pick up some of the slack.
10. (Optional) Add the baking powder – makes it a little lighter.
11. Grease and flour your baking dish.
12. Bake in a pre-heated oven at around 180c for around 20 minutes – cooking time will depend on the depth of your mixture & how wet it is. Keeping the temperature moderate will ensure the mixture sets before the top burns. Test the pudding by inserting a clean knife or skewer – if it comes out clean the pudding is ready. Clean doesn’t mean bone dry, the pudding will be over-cooked if you wait for this. A few traces of chocolate are par for the course.