Chocolate Croissant Pudding

It's only coincidental that I post a luscious hot chocolate dessert on Valentine's Day. The occasion has never figured large in our long married life and I don't expect anything to change in the future. We are all chocoholics here, so chocolate features heavily in my cooking, as you might have noticed!

This dessert really needs some planning ahead as it needs 24-48 hours refrigeration after the initial preparation and before baking.

I used Delia Smith's recipe for Chocolate Bread and Butter Pudding, from her Winter Collection, using 13 baked from frozen mini-croissants instead of bread. This was the only change I made to the recipe. There were 15 croissants in the pack, but we had to have some Quality Control testing! They were very light, and it was difficult to get them to soak up the chocolate custard mixture as you can see from the photo, but I don't think that detracted too much from the dessert. The croissants which I cut to fit in the gaps in the dish soaked up more custard, so it might have been better to slice them all in half first.

The only problem with the pudding was that it took much longer to cook than the recipe suggested. I gave up waiting for the centre to set after 45 minutes; I took three portions from around the edge and returned the dish to the oven for another 10 minutes. I put it into the oven straight from the fridge; in future I will bring it up to room temperature several hours before baking.

When hot, the custard was creamy and gooey, the soaked croissants soft but their exposed tops fairly crisp, which was all a good contrast in textures. The flavour was rich and not too sweet, as I used chocolate with 85% cocoa solids. When cold the custard set more solidly, but it was still good to eat. I haven't yet decided whether I prefer to eat the pudding hot or cold.