Chocolate Pudding Cakes and Give-Away

I love magazines. I love the excitement of seeing them in the mailbox, ripping open the plastic to view the new cover photo, and of course, the smell.  My favorite one to smell is the "InStyle" magazine.  I've always wondered why a company hasn't come out with a perfume that smells like "InStyle" - the combination of all of the perfume samples combined with the ink is so wonderful.  I subscribe to several food magazines each month and pore over them looking for new recipes and ideas to use in the kitchen.  I was going through my stack of magazines the other day and came across a few of my favorite issues I've collected.  I like to pick up these favorite issues, thumb through them once in a while, and dream of all of the recipes and crafts I'm going to do. 

One of my favorites is a Martha Stewart Living magazine from June 2008. The cover has a honey-glazed beehive cake with marzipan bees. I've looked at that recipe so many times and have made a mental note to buy the beehive cake pan, but I've never actually done so - not quite sure why. I've even seen the cake pan at Williams Sonoma but passed it up thinking "I'll do it later." There's another magazine from 2008 that includes instructions for homemade luminaries, a bandana-patterned fruit tart, and you gotta love the hand-stitched drink covers so the pesky mosquitoes don't get into your drink. One of these days I'm going to have that perfect outdoor party with handmade everything.

I also have a Donna Hay magazine (issue39) that I longingly gaze through every-so-often. The cover says "Take it Slow". I think that's why I like the issue so much. There's a recipe for homemade s‘mores - homemade all the way down to the graham crackers - that everyone gathers to eat on the beach in the winter. Sometimes I wonder why I don't make all these recipes, but then I realize that I enjoy looking and simply fanaticizing about what it would be like to cook up Clam Chowder over the fire on the beach followed by those gooey homemade s'mores. For one thing, there's no clean-up if I simply leaf through the pictures and imagine all the tranquil fun.

I also have recipes in piles from 10+ years ago I'm still planning to try someday.  One of them is a lemon sussex pudding featuring an entire lemon baked inside the middle of a cake.  I'll get to that one day, but so far I haven't found the right afternoon to experiment with a cake and a whole lemon.  There's also a craft project to make a darling umbrella stand using a galvanized bucket and some paint.  So cute, but quite impractical for where I live now.   Besides, all my friends know I'm not very crafty; even the kids know they come to my house for the good food, but down the street, my friend Jenn has all the great crafts.

I love a simple, homey self-saucing chocolate pudding.  I've made many different variations over the years, but I found another version in one of my "old favorite" magazines from the wicker basket and I thought I'd give it a shot.  Of course, as with most recipes, I modified the process so it would fit my desire for whole, unrefined ingredients.  I've also been playing a bit with gluten-free grains so I made this one gluten-free just for the fun of it.

I'm having a give-away this week for a pair of Le Creuset stoneware baking dishes!  One is a 10.5" x 7" and the other is 7"x 5" in a beautiful blue caribbean color.  The good people at the CSN stores are hosting this give-away.  They sell everything from cookware to yoga gear to barstools - love a site like that!  To enter the give-away please leave a comment between today and Monday, March 22nd and I'll announce the winner on Tuesday.  Good luck!

Individual Chocolate Pudding Cakes
If you don't have any gluten-free flours on hand you can simply substitute 1 cup of whole wheat pastry flour for the rice, sorghum and tapioca flours. 
Serves 4

1/2 cup brewed herbal coffee
1/2 cup water
2/3 cup cacao powder 
1/3 cup organic whole cane sugar or sucanat (to read about this sugar click here)
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 cup organic whole cane sugar or sucanat, divided
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup sorghum flour
2 tablespoons tapioca flour (or starch)
2 teaspoons aluminum-free baking powder
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup whole milk
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 large egg yolk

Preheat oven to 400°F and adjust oven rack to lower-middle position. Lightly oil 4 (8-ounce) ramekins or ovenproof bowls and set them on a baking sheet. Stir together herbal coffee and water and set aside. In a medium bowl combine 1/3 cup whole cane sugar and maple syrup until sugar is moist.  Stir in 1/3 cup cocoa, and 1/3 cup whole cane sugar breaking up any large clumps with fingers; set aside.

Melt butter, remaining 1/3 cup cocoa, and chocolate in a double boiler and whisk until smooth. Whisk rice flour, sorghum flour, tapioca flour, and baking powder in small bowl to combine; set aside. Whisk remaining 2/3 cup whole cane sugar, vanilla, milk, sea salt, and egg yolk in medium bowl until combined. Add the chocolate mixture and whisk to combine. Add flour mixture and whisk until batter is evenly moistened.

2. Divide batter evenly among ramekins and level with back of spoon.  Sprinkle about 3 tablespoons cocoa/sugar mixture over batter in each ramekin. Pour 4 tablespoons coffee mixture over cocoa/sugar mixture in each ramekin. Bake for 20 minutes until puffed. (Do not overbake.) Cool puddings for about 15 minutes before serving (cakes will fall).

This post is linked to Real Food Wednesday