Chocolate Pudding Cake

The chocolate pudding cake is J's fault. I wish I could also blame her for the fact that I seem to be eating the entire cake.

J emailed me a few weeks ago asking for a chocolate pudding recipe. I said my regular recipe is Joy of Cooking, with the optional chopped chocolate, but there is also the chocolate banana creme brulee S makes, and did she want me to send her the recipes? She said yes, so I asked S where the chocolate banana creme brulee recipe is, and he said it was in the weird celebrity chefs cook kosher benefit cookbook that his parents gave us some years ago. So I was flipping through the weird celebrity chefs cook kosher benefit cookbook (the chefs aren't weird; the cookbook is) and I found the chocolate pudding cake recipe, by Chris Schlesinger, no less, and I thought I've got to make that. So Tuesday I did.

I just googled around a little to see if I could find the recipe, but I couldn't--there are plenty of chocolate pudding cake recipes but I got bored before I found one that looked as decadent as Chris's. They all follow basically the same methodology: make a thick batter and spread it in a pan, cover it with a sugar-cocoa mixture, then pour liquid over it (in this case 2 cups coffee and 1 cup water), and bake. You end up with brownie-like cake atop fudgy pudding-like sauce. I don't know why, but you do.

The cake was very easy to make, aside from my customary panic when the batter did not seem like the right consistency, according to the recipe description. But I persevered. I also used the Valrhona cocoa and French Roast coffee. Yum. Luckily I went to pick M up from religious school, so S took it out of the oven and I got to skip my usual is-it-baked-enough panic. Which was a good thing, especially because that is one ugly cake: lumpy and mottled, kind of like a dark moonscape, or perhaps Kelly's garden when it rains after the compost is dug in, but before anything starts to grow.

How was it? We had it warm on Tuesday night and it was quite delicious: kind of like a chewy cake with hot fudge sauce--on the bottom. But Wednesday? Cold? Spooned straight out of the pan? The sauce thickened to a puddingish consistency and the cake perfectly chewy? Really good. So good you have to take another spoonful. And another. And then take a break, and maybe go back for more. Because, after all, you know you're going to eat the whole thing eventually, because nobody else seems to be eating it, because that's how we are, we eat cake the first night and then we just leave it, which is why we give half of every cake to F and L downstairs, and even I am of this non-cake-finishing persuasion, for the most part, but this time, it's just too too good, and I know I will eat the whole thing eventually, so I might as well eat it now, because then I won't have to eat it later, no?

Happy to send the recipe to anyone who wants it, but you either need to have good willpower or be at peace with your lack of willpower.