Food trends may come and go, but one con­stant will always be in favour: chocolate.

What is it about this ingredi­ent that makes people weak at the knees? Melt­ing togeth­er dark chocol­ate and cream for a ganache is one of the most sat­is­fy­ing things you can do when cook­ing — the gloss it takes on is enough to make you emo­tion­al. I wouldn’t say I have a sweet tooth per se, but I really do love dessert. There’s noth­ing more com­fort­ing than fin­ish­ing a meal with a dessert hot out of the oven, espe­cially as the weath­er cools down. I tend to head towards fruity pud­dings when I’m din­ing out, but there is some­thing par­tic­u­larly sat­is­fy­ing about gooey chocolate.

These lus­cious fond­ant pud­dings are that gor­geous mix­ture of a cake and a pud­ding, their melt­ing centre burst­ing out, and will undoubtedly impress any din­ner guests. Crème fraîche provides a tart cut through to the rich­ness, and I always try to put some sea­son­al fruit or berry coulis on the side if I can. The pud­dings don’t take long to cook and are about as dreamy as desserts get, so rug up and get melting.

Chocolate Fondant Puddings

Ingredients

• 200g dark chocol­ate (I used Whittaker’s Dark Ghana)
• 150g but­ter
• 4 large eggs and 3 extra yolks
• 100g caster sugar
• 50g flour
• Crème fraîche to serve

Method

1. Heat the oven to 200˚C. Grease six small ramekins, dust with flour and chill in the fridge until the mix­ture is ready.
2. Chop the chocol­ate roughly into chunks and melt togeth­er with the but­ter care­fully in a bowl over a pot of sim­mer­ing water.
3. Place the eggs, yolks and sug­ar in a cake mix­er (or in a bowl and use elec­tric beat­ers) and mix until mousse-like and doubled in size.
4. Fold in the chocol­ate mix­ture with a large met­al spoon until the mousse is smooth and slackened. Sift over the flour and fold again.
5. Pour or spoon the mix­ture into the ramekins and bake for 12 minutes until ris­en and set. The top will be cakey and the inside gooey.
6. Serve in the ramekin with a dol­lop of crème fraîche on top, and with fresh ber­ries of your choice on the side.

Serves 6