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Chocolate Puddings
Make some Genoese cake mixture as you would for a light cake, and pour it into greased molds like cups. You can take the weight of one egg in dried flour, butter, and rather less of sugar. Beat the butter and sugar together to a cream, sprinkle in the flour, stirring all the time, a pinch of salt, and then the beaten egg. When your little cakes are baked, turn them out of the molds and when cool turn them upside down and remove the inside, leaving a deep hole and a thin crust all round. Fill up this hole with the custard and chocolate as above, and let it grow firm. Then turn the cases right way up and pour over the top a sweet cherry sauce. You may require the yolks of two eggs to make the custard firm.
A small cake hollowed out, filled with chocolate custard and sauced with cherries. The instructions assume you have just read the chocolate custard recipe that precedes it, so plan that part before you start.
- "The weight of one egg"A large egg in the shell runs about 2 oz / 55-60 g, so take that much flour and butter each, and a little less sugar, about 1½ oz / 40 g. Scale up by whole eggs: four eggs' weight fills roughly eight to ten dariole molds or a standard muffin tin.
- "Dried flour"Flour was once warmed near the fire to drive off damp before creaming it into butter. Modern bagged flour is dry enough; ignore the step.
- Not a true génoiseDespite the name, the method given is the creaming method of a pound cake — butter and sugar beaten to a cream, then flour, then egg. Follow the text as written rather than whisking whole eggs over heat as you would for a real Genoese sponge.
- Molds"Greased molds like cups" probably points to dariole or timbale molds. Buttered and floured metal molds, or a deep muffin tin, both work. Fill no more than two-thirds so the tops stay flat enough to sit upside down.
- OvenThe book gives no temperature. Small butter cakes of this size want a moderate oven, 350F, for 15-20 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.
- Hollowing them outLet the cakes cool completely first — warm crumb tears. Cut a circle with a small knife and scoop with a teaspoon, leaving about ¼ inch of wall and base. Keep the plugs; they can be replaced as lids or eaten separately.
- The custard"As above" refers to the chocolate custard given earlier in the section. The note about "the yolks of two eggs" is the important part: a pouring custard will run straight out of the case, so make it thick enough to set — add the two yolks to the custard as the text suggests, and cool and chill it until firm before filling.
- Cherry sauceSour cherries such as morellos are the likely fruit here. Simmer stoned cherries with sugar to taste and a little of their juice, thicken lightly with arrowroot or cornflour, and cool before pouring — hot sauce will soften the crust and slump the custard.
- Yield and servingOne filled cake per person. Assemble no more than a few hours ahead; the cake absorbs moisture from the custard and goes soggy overnight.
The Belgian Cook Book was compiled by Mrs. Brian Luck and published in 1915, gathering recipes from Belgian refugees who had fled to Britain after the German invasion of 1914, with the dishes taken down from displaced households rather than from professional chefs. That origin shows in this entry: it is written the way one cook explains something to another, leaning on a custard recipe "as above" and measuring by the weight of an egg rather than by scales. Weighing dry goods against an egg in its shell was a common domestic shortcut, and the same principle underlies the French quatre-quarts. The small cake baked in a cup-like mold is close kin to the English castle pudding, and chocolate with sour cherries is a familiar northern European pairing, morellos being a common preserving cherry.