These molten chocolate puddings were inspired by this ultimate peanut butter chocolate cake I posted a few weeks back.

If you haven’t tried that chocolate cake yet, it’s rich and fudgey, with a soft, velvety chocolate texture…. reminiscent of a molten chocolate pudding that’s been cooked just a little too long.

It also has a rich peanut butter quality to it and when I think of peanut butter, the classic peanut butter and jam combo always comes to mind, no doubt because Nick has it on his toast evert morning.

These musings naturally lead to the idea for these molten chocolate, peanut butter and raspberry lava puddings.

The chocolate pudding is very similar to the chocolate cake recipe. It contains no eggs, dairy or grains, is sweetened with either pure maple or rice syrup and a little coconut sugar, and gets it’s rich chocolate flavour from raw cacao powder. The molten raspberry centre is a simple combination of frozen raspberries, chia seeds and rice syrup, and the trick to assembling them is keeping the raspberry centre frozen.

If you have a peanut allergy or simply don’t like peanuts, you can substitute the peanut butter in this recipe for any other type of nut butter. However, this recipe does work best with peanut butter. This is due in part to the ultra smooth texture of smooth peanut butter versus other types of nut butter, but foremost to the rich sweet flavour of the peanuts.

If you decide to substitute in another type of nut butter I would strongly recommend using pure maple syrup as the sweetener in order to make the puddings sweet enough. If you wish to use rice syrup with an alternative nut butter then I suggest increasing the quantity of rice syrup to ensure you still get a good result, although I can’t guarantee that combination! My attempts of using almond butter and rice syrup produced puddings that no one could eat, which isn’t ideal when you’ve taken them to a friends for a dinner party.

As usual this recipe is very easy, for the chocolate pudding it’s just a matter of throwing everything into a food processor and blending. The raspberry chia jam centre is pretty much the same. The hardest part is probably spooning them into the muffin holes and making sure you have fully enclosed the raspberry centres. That said if you have a bit of leakage it’s not the end of the world, it just makes them look even more like exploding volcanoes. Enjoy!

Molten Chocolate, Peanut Butter and Raspberry Lava Puddings

Makes: 6 puddings
Prep time: 30 minutes Cook time: 15 minutes

Chocolate Pudding
125g smooth peanut butter (salted or unsalted)
50g pure maple syrup or rice syrup
10g coconut sugar
15g buckwheat flour
10g ground almonds
25g raw cacao powder
pinch Himalayan pink salt
125g coconut milk

Raw Raspberry Chia Sauce
1 1/2 cups frozen raspberries
1 Tbsp white chia seeds
1 Tbsp rice syrup

To Serve (optional)
Freeze dried raspberries
Fresh berries
Coconut yoghurt or Nice cream

Preheat the oven to 170ºC. Grease 6 holes of a standard muffin pan with coconut oil and place a disc of baking paper in the bottom of each. This prevents the cakes from sticking and allows you to lift them out easily once cooked.

Place all the chocolate pudding ingredients into a food processor and blend until smooth. The mixture should be quite thick and hold it’s shape.

Place a generous dessert spoonful of chocolate pudding mix into each lined muffin hole and spread it out so it evenly fills the hole. Use the spoon to create a hollow in the centre of each pudding for the raspberry sauce to sit in, but be careful not to go all the way through.

To make the raspberry chia sauce place all the ingredients into a high speed blender and blend until smooth. The frozen raspberries will need a bit of stirring to get them to blend, but you want the sauce to stay reasonably frozen so it stays together when you spoon it into the puddings.

Place a generous teaspoonful of frozen raspberry chia sauce into the centre of each chocolate pudding. Then place another generous dessert spoonful of chocolate pudding mix over top of the raspberry chia sauce, carefully smoothing it down and around to completely enclose the sauce.

Place the chocolate puddings in the centre of the oven and bake for 10 to 15 minutes. The puddings are ready when they have formed a crust and the edges are firm to touch. Remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool for a few minutes – this gives them time to set and avoids expoding puddings.

To serve, run a knife around the edge of each pudding and gently lift them out of the muffin hole. Place upside down on a plate and peel off the disc of paper. Serve the puddings while hot, either straight up or sprinkled with freeze dried raspberries, fresh berries and/or your favourite coconut yoghurt or nice cream.

Once cooked the chocolate puddings will keep in a sealed container in the fridge for up to 5 days or 1 month in the freeze.

POPULAR POSTS