Chocolate & Coffee fondant with a latte sauce

Caroline's just come home for Christmas, and she adores chocolate.  Luckily for me I had a few of these delicious fondants left over from cookery classes and they have been in the freezer ever since.  I usually defrost before cooking but the one in the picture I just cooked from frozen for 14 minutes and had a very happy daughter.  Although fondants are easy to make the hard bit is the cooking time -  a minute too long in the oven and they are not gooey in the centre and if too underdone they collapse on unmoulding.  The recipe makes 7 fondants so I usually do a test cook with 1 fondant and then when I am entertaining I know exactly how long to cook them for.  Everyone who came to the Christmas demonstration classes really enjoyed this recipe, the coffee in the recipe just takes a little of the sweetness away from the chocolate.

Chocolate and Coffee Fondants with a Caffe Latte Sauce

Serves 6-7

Ingredients

175g/6oz butter , plus extra melted butter for greasing

cocoa powder , for dusting

175g/6oz good-quality dark chocolate (we used 70%)

175g/6oz golden caster sugar

4 eggs

50ml/2fl oz expresso coffee (we used 1tsp instant espresso coffee)

85g/3 ½ oz plain flour

Gold covered beans and gold leaf to decorate

Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Use a pastry brush to grease 7 dariole moulds or individual pudding basins (with a capacity of 200ml / 7fl oz) really well and place in the fridge for the butter to set. Then grease again, dust with cocoa powder and set aside. Melt the butter in a pan over a low heat, when almost melted add the chopped chocolate, turn out the heat and let the chocolate melt in the hot butter.  Set aside. In a separate bowl, whisk the sugar and eggs together until light and fluffy (5-10 minutes). Fold the chocolate and whisked egg mixture together, then add the coffee and finally fold through the flour.

Divide the mixture between the darioles.  Place on a baking tray and bake for 11- 13 mins until the mixture has puffed up and formed a crust but still has a slight wobble to it. Turn the puddings out onto serving plates, decorate with gold leaf and serve with the cold caffe latte sauce and gold beans.

Caffe latte sauce

125ml/4fl oz milk

125ml/4fl oz single cream

30g/1oz caster sugar

½ tsp vanilla extract

2 large egg yolks, lightly beaten

100ml/3½fl oz double cream

1 tbsp icing sugar sifted

50ml/2fl oz espresso cooled

½ tsp coffee extract (optional)

Heat the milk, single cream, caster sugar and vanilla in a pan to just below boiling point .  Whisk the yolks in a bowl, pour over the hot milk, stirring then return to the pan.  Cook, stirring over a low heat for 5-6 mins until thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon.  Strain through a sieve, cover the surface with cling film and set aside to cool.  Whip the double cream to soft peaks, then fold into the cooled mixture along with the icing sugar, espresso & extract if using.

To get ahead: The fondants and sauce can be made up to 2 days ahead and stored in the fridge.

To freeze: The fondants and sauce can be frozen up to 1 month ahead.  Defrost before cooking as above.

This beautiful photo was taken by Hannah