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Chocolate Nutella Pudding

It was around this week last year that I posted my favourite Soft-Centred Chocolate Pudding recipe. For those who missed it, you can find it here.

It’s no surprise then, that as the weather has cooled and the Easter weekend looms close, I find myself thinking of chocolate and warming desserts once again. 

It was while my boys were snuggled on the lounge watching the Grand Prix and the rain was softly falling, that I was drawn to the kitchen and started to muck around with the good old classic Chocolate Self-Saucing pudding recipe that I am sure many of you have either made or eaten before. 

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On a side note, it was my first day out of bed after succumbing to the flu and I was completely over lemon and ginger tea and not being able to taste much of my food. 

So with limited energy to spare and 4 sets of hungry eyes looking at me from the lounge, I thought of this SUPER easy, mix-and-bake-in-the-one bowl dessert.

The best way I can describe it in relation to the Soft-Centred Pudding recipe above is using the analogy of shoes. 

The Soft-Centred Puddings are your black high heels. They are perfect for enjoying with guests, table cloths and candles and a well-thought out dinner party menu. 

This Chocolate Nutella Self-Saucing pudding are your ugg boots. You pull them out when you are tired and the weather is cold and you want to eat something with your family, preferably in your PJ’s and in front of a good movie. 

The best bit about this recipe, apart from the taste, is that you mix it all in the bowl you bake it in, a big tick for the minimal washing up.

Serve it with cream, custard or ice-cream…..and in your ugg boots. 

Chocolate Nutella Pudding
Serves 6
A chocolate and hazelnut pudding, that creates it's own rich sauce as it bakes.
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Prep Time
10 min
Cook Time
50 min
Total Time
1 hr
Prep Time
10 min
Cook Time
50 min
Total Time
1 hr
Ingredients
  1. 1 cup self raising flour
  2. 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
  3. 1/4 cup castor sugar
  4. 1 egg
  5. 1/4 cup nutella
  6. 1/2 cup milk
  7. 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  8. Topping
  9. 2 tablespoons nutella
  10. 1/2 cup brown sugar
  11. 1 3/4 cup boiling water
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius.
  2. Pour the flour, cocoa and sugar into a round baking dish (approx 4 cup/2L size) and whisk with a hand ballon whisk until combined.
  3. Make a hole in the centre of these ingredients.
  4. In a small jug, mix all other ingredients, (except the topping) with a fork and then pour into the hole in the dry ingredients.
  5. With a wooden spoon, stir until smooth and combined.
  6. For the topping - in a small bowl, mix nutella and brown sugar together. It will become clumpy.
  7. Sprinkle this mix over the top of the pudding.
  8. Pour the boiling water gently over the top of the pudding.
  9. Bake in the oven for 45-50 minutes, or until the top of the pudding is cooked and spongy but you can see the sauce bubbling up the sides.
  10. Cool for a few minutes and serve with cream, custard or ice-cream.
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Roman Chicken

This is your classic one-pot comfort food cooking. I often serve it with green veggies and some steamed baby potatoes or to make it even easier, have a chunky loaf of sourdough on the table to help mop up all the yummy juices. 

This recipe has been a favourite amongst a group of my friends for ages. We all love it, cook it often and even make it for each other when things are a bit tough.

It’s also a perfect dish for doubling if you want to feed guests a simple but tasty meal at this cooler time of year. Serve it Italian style – in the middle of the table with salad, bread and wine. 

I noticed chef Neil Perry (aka Rockpool) writing about the same dish, (he called his Italian Chicken) in the Sunday paper recently. He used chicken pieces, like drumsticks and marylands, but I really prefer chicken thigh fillets, as we don’t need to worry about any bones but they still stay nice and moist.

I have had this recipe for so long I can’t remember where the original came from, my guess is I found it in an Australian Good Taste or Good Food Magazine.

One last thing….I have a love of and obsession with TINNED TOMATOES,  they are one of my pantry staples all year round. A quick soup base, a pasta sauce, thrown into a slow cooker with meat and veggies, there isn’t much a tin of tomatoes can’t do. 

Roman Chicken
Serves 5
a one-pot chicken dish with tomatoes, bacon, capsicums and olives.
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Prep Time
10 min
Cook Time
20 min
Total Time
30 min
Prep Time
10 min
Cook Time
20 min
Total Time
30 min
Ingredients
  1. 500 grams chicken thigh fillets, trimmed and halved
  2. 2 tablespoons olive oil
  3. 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
  4. 2-3 rashers of bacon, trimmed, finely chopped
  5. 2 teaspoons dried oregano leaves
  6. 1/2 teaspoon dried chilli flakes or 1/2 a fresh red chilli, de-seeded and finely chopped (optional)
  7. 800 gram tin of diced tomatoes
  8. 1 large red capsicum, de-seeded and chopped roughly
  9. 1 large yellow capsicum, de-seeded and chopped roughly
  10. a handful of pitted black olives and chopped fresh basil to serve
Instructions
  1. Heat olive oil in large frying pan or casserole dish over a medium heat.
  2. Add chicken pieces and cook until browned all over. If your pan is small, do this in 2 batches.
  3. Set chicken aside on a plate.
  4. Add garlic, bacon and chilli to the pan and sauté for a few minutes until golden.
  5. Add chopped capsicums, tinned tomatoes and the browned chicken into the pan. Season with salt and pepper.
  6. Cover pan and simmer gently for 20 minutes, giving it a stir a couple of times.
  7. Remove the lid and simmer for 5 minutes to thicken the sauce slightly.
  8. If desired, add olives and fresh basil leaves at this stage.
Notes
  1. You could use chicken pieces like drumsticks or marylands in this dish.
  2. You could use chicken breasts, but they do tend to dry out a bit, so you will need to reduce your cooking time if you use them.
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Farewell Summer Salad

When Autumn officially started 11 days ago, I was all ready with my soup pot and slow cooker, dreaming of new ways to use autumn’s rich bounty of fruits and vegetables. 

As anyone reading this in Sydney would know, we’ve had 2 extra weeks of summer, as temperatures have stayed above 30 degrees and the humidity has been at 1000% every day and some nights too. 

The hydrangea, my favourite summer flower, has continued to give me great joy with this extended heat. They began flowering early, last October in fact, and this beauty is the very last one in my garden. I just had to capture it in the fading afternoon sun. 

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So officially Autumn, but in the midst of a heat wave, we have kept enjoying The Weather of Salad. 

It was on a bend on a very busy road that I saw the mango man, and probably with not enough warning for the drivers behind us, screamed at my husband to stop and let me get what would probably be the last box of mangoes for the season. 

We’ve had mango at breakfast, after lunch and at dinner over this last 2 weeks of our extended summer, a fitting farewell to the fun, outdoor season that we love. 

While the BBQ was heating and the boys were finishing in the pool, this salad was thrown into a bowl. Being honest, most of the ingredients chosen were because I was once again, doing a fridge clean out. But as I began throwing this in with that and chopping this, I could see that the colours and flavours were actually working. 

I hope you enjoy it as much as we did. 

Farewell summer, we’ve had a blast.

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Farewell Summer Salad
Serves 5
A colourful and fresh salad topped with avocado, mango, feta and fresh herbs.
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Prep Time
10 min
Total Time
10 min
Prep Time
10 min
Total Time
10 min
Ingredients
  1. 3 big handfuls of baby spinach leaves, washed
  2. 1/8 purple cabbabe, finely shredded
  3. 1 large cucumber, halved lengthwise and cut into thin rounds
  4. 1 corn cob, husks removed, or 1 small can of corn, drained
  5. 1 avocado, flesh sliced thinly
  6. 1 large mango, flesh sliced thinly
  7. 100 grams greek feta, cut into cubes
  8. a handful of yellow cherry tomatoes, cut in half
  9. a handful of fresh mint
  10. juice of 1 lime
  11. salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
  1. If using a fresh corn cob, steam it in the microwave for 2 minutes or until soft. Using a sharp knife, remove the corn from the cob.
  2. Layer the baby spinach and cabbage in the bottom of a large salad bowl.
  3. Add cucumber, corn, avocado and mango.
  4. Top with fresh mint leaves, feta and cherry tomatoes.
  5. Squeeze lime juice all over the salad, finishing with a pinch of salt and pepper to taste.
Notes
  1. As with all salad recipes, leave out ingredients you don't like or have on hand, and substitute with whatever takes your fancy. There are really no limits when it comes to salads, however, the fresh mint and lime juice really do finish this salad off.
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Chicken, Coconut and Lemon Soup

We eat for many different reasons. 

Obviously, we eat first and foremost to sustain life. Many simple foods, alongside water, can keep us alive if we lived on those alone. 

But we also eat for pleasure and as a shared experience with others. 

We also eat alone, and we can eat to numb pain and distract us from whatever it is we can’t deal with.

Mostly I eat to ‘nourish’ not just to simply stay alive.

I love the word nourish. It makes me think of growth, healing, strength, fuel. It’s more than just simply eating to survive, but thinking about what foods can actually nourish your body too. There is so much about our lives, and even our health at times, that is beyond our control. However, we can actively contribute to nourishing our bodies. How good is that!

I also eat for pleasure. The experience, the smells, the taste, the relationships that happen alongside the eating. 

If I ate for pleasure every day, my day-on-a-plate would look like dark chocolate covered liquorice, triple cream brie, coffee and red wine. Yep, I know, sounds awesome. But we all know what would happen to my health if that was all I ever consumed.

So, for myself, I eat mostly to nourish and a little for pleasure. 

I don’t think it’s a bad thing for us to stop sometimes and have a ‘health check-up’ with ourselves when it comes to our eating. Often a health crisis or illness will prompt that for you, but even if you’re fighting fit, it still could be helpful to make sure you are nourishing your body, to the best that your time, money and expertise allows. 

This soup is not just another dinner for the family because you have to feed them.

It’s a warm bowl of bright yellow goodness that will cheer up anyone on a dreary day and nourish your body at the same time.

My first experience with it was when I was really sick last year with the flu and a friend made a batch of it and dropped it over. I actually hadn’t been eating much until this soup arrived. Not only did the colour cheer me up almost immediately, but as I ate it, I could almost feel myself getting a little clearer and a little stronger. I ate it for days. 

This is the kind of soup that you will pick up the bowl when it’s nearing the end and drink the gold liquid until there is nothing left at all. Well, that’s what the boys and I did anyway. 

It will remind you a little of the broth you would eat in a really good laksa, so you could easily throw some more veggies or rice stick noodles into this to make it more of a substantial meal, or if your family are a little fussy about ‘just having soup for dinner.’

My only regret when I made it was that I didn’t double the recipe. So make a double batch and either give some away to anyone sick or struggling, or freeze it for when that cold is starting to come and you want to nip it in the bud before it takes hold. 

This recipe is originally from Quirky Cooking by Jo Whitton, (a thermomix cookbook for people with food sensitivities) but as I don’t own a thermomix, I just made it the old fashioned way in a soup pot and it turned out just fine. 

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Chicken, Coconut and Lemon Soup
Serves 4
A nourishing and fragrant chicken soup with loads of ginger, turmeric, garlic and lemon.
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Prep Time
5 min
Cook Time
25 min
Total Time
30 min
Prep Time
5 min
Cook Time
25 min
Total Time
30 min
Ingredients
  1. 4cm cube of fresh ginger, peeled
  2. 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
  3. 3 garlic cloves
  4. 6 sprigs of fresh coriander, plus a few leaves extra to garnish
  5. 2 spring onions, ends trimmed and chopped into quarters
  6. 1/2 teaspoon dried chilli flakes
  7. 1 litre good quality chicken stock
  8. 400 gram can coconut milk
  9. juice of 1 lemon
  10. 2 tablespoons fish sauce
  11. 400 gram chicken thigh fillets, trimmed and chopped into small cubes.
Instructions
  1. Place ginger, turmeric, garlic, spring onions and chilli in a food processor and blitz until a fragrant and bright green paste forms.
  2. Heat a little olive oil in a soup pot over medium heat and add the paste.
  3. Cook, stirring so it won't stick, for a few minutes or until the smell is just amazing and it's softened and sizzling.
  4. Add all the other ingredients, except the chicken pieces, and put a lid on the pot.
  5. Bring to a boil and then add the chicken pieces, turn the heat down so your soup is on a gentle simmer and cook for a further 10 minutes with the lid and another 10 or so with the lid off.
  6. Garnish with extra coriander leaves if you desire.
Notes
  1. You could add rice stick noodles and some chopped asian greens to the soup towards the end of the cooking to make it more of a substantial meal.
Adapted from Quirky Cooking
Adapted from Quirky Cooking
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French-style Summer Fruit Tart

I love the rustic nature of this tart.

Usually when cooking with pastry, you need to get things ‘just right’. Rolled to an even thickness and then into a perfect shape for a tin. Then the pastry needs to make it into the tin without breaking before it is ‘blind baked’, a process whereby you place dried beans or rice on top of some baking paper inside the tart shell to bake it before the filling is added. I don’t mean to scare you off, it isn’t overly difficult, but it can be fiddly and time consuming if you have not done it a few times over. 

Never fear friend, as none of this is required with this tart, hence why I was able to make it over the weekend, without much stress or fanfare, even as the kids where running in and out and the Roast Chook was cooking away in the oven. 

My in-laws had arrived to stay for a few days and came bearing freshly picked blackberries from the side of the road near their farm, on the other side of the Blue Mountains. 

My perfect kind of present, I washed them and placed them in a bowl and wondered what I would do with them next. 

Enter Maggie Beers simple French-style tart. 

Her famous sour cream pastry is made in the food processor, rested as all pastry needs in the fridge and then rolled out to a rough thickness, in a rough shape of whatever takes your fancy. 

A beautiful mixture, known as a ‘frangipane’ is also made in the food processor. This french term basically describes a mixture of butter, sugar, eggs and ground almonds and is what you will almost always find in store-bought fruit tarts. 

Then you get to place whatever fruit you love over the top, fold the edges over and bake the whole tart in the oven. 

Enjoy it warm from the oven with cream or ice-cream, or, as we also discovered, at room temperature the next day as leftovers with a cup of tea.

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there is something about bringing a freshly cooked tart or pie to a table full of people that makes me feel completely satisfied, if at least just for that moment. 

I would encourage anyone wanting to start playing with pastry, to begin with this recipe. You can’t stuff it up and then it will give you the confidence to try another more tricky pastry recipe soon.

French-style Summer Fruit Tart
Serves 8
A rustic french-style tart with a shortcrust pastry base, a creamy frangipane filling and topped with fresh seasonal fruits.
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Prep Time
40 min
Cook Time
45 min
Total Time
1 hr 25 min
Prep Time
40 min
Cook Time
45 min
Total Time
1 hr 25 min
Sour Cream Pastry
  1. 200 grams chilled unsalted butter, chopped
  2. 300 grams plain flour
  3. 1/3 cup sour cream
Frangipane Filling
  1. 125 grams unsalted butter, softened
  2. 150 grams castor sugar
  3. 2 eggs
  4. 1/4 cup brandy or whisky
  5. 2 tablespoons plain flour
  6. 200 grams almond or hazelnut meal
  7. approx 3-4 nectarines, sliced thinly into wedges (or if using plums or apricots, just halve them)
  8. 125 grams of fresh blackberries
  9. 2 teaspoons milk plus 1 egg yolk (for glazing the pastry)
For the Pastry
  1. Pulse butter and flour in a food processor until it resembles breadcrumbs.
  2. Add sour cream and pulse until it comes together in a ball and clears the sides of the bowl.
  3. Remove, wrap in plastic wrap and place in the fridge to chill for 20 minutes.
  4. Preheat oven to 190 degrees celsius.
For the Filling
  1. Place the butter and sugar in the food processor and whiz until thick, pale and creamy.
  2. Add the eggs one at a time, stopping and scraping down the sides occasionally.
  3. Add the remaining ingredients and whiz until combined.
  4. Set aside.
  5. Line a large baking tray with baking paper.
  6. Roll pastry on a lightly floured surface, till about 5mm thick. It can be rectangle, round or oval, whatever takes your fancy.
  7. Spread the filling over the top, leaving a 5cm boarder.
  8. Arrange the fruit on top.
  9. Fold the pastry edges over, and using a pastry brush, brush the edges with the combined milk and egg yolk.
  10. Bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes or until fruit soft and pastry golden.
  11. Dust with icing sugar to serve.
Notes
  1. Any fruit you like would work in this tart. Peaches, plums, apricots, cherries, raspberries, pears or apples. If the fruit is smaller, you will obviously need more to fill the tart. For example you may need 10-15 small plums or apricots instead of 4 large nectarines as the recipe states.
  2. You can use as much or as little fruit as you like.
Adapted from Delicious Magazine February 2011
Adapted from Delicious Magazine February 2011
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