French puddings au chocolat

For Valentine’s Day

So short our lives, so hard the lessons, so difficult the tests, so sudden the final victory, so tenuous the hope of joy that so easily evaporates into fear – this is what I mean by Love. - Geoffrey Chaucer

Saint Valentine, the saint associated with the tradition of courtly love since the Middle Ages, is also the patron saint of epilepsy and beekeepers, but that’s another story. February 14 was designated as the saint’s day in 498 by Pope Gelasius I and has been celebrated as the Feast of Saint Valentine since the 8th century. There is a story about Valentine - or Valentinus - restoring the sight of a judge’s daughter to whom, some time later, he sent a missive, signed “from your Valentine” just before being beaten with clubs, stoned, and beheaded for refusing to stop evangelizing and renounce his faith. On February 14 in the year 269. There seems to have been no romance between Valentinus and the girl, no romance in his letter to her, yet some say that it “inspired today’s romantic missives.” 

Poor Valentinus, who didn’t become a saint and a martyr until centuries later, pushed around, in and out of favor in the different Churches, from feast to mere commemoration to removed from mention and back again, didn't become associated with romantic love until the poet Geoffrey Chaucer wrote about him in the 14th century. While some have suggested that celebrations on Saint Valentine’s Day were created in an attempt to distract from the pagan Lupercalia, a pastoral festival of Ancient Rome promoting and celebrating health and fertility, it is more likely due to Chaucer and his circle of poets that it evolved into a holiday.

Parliament of Fowls - sometimes called Parliament of Birds - was a poem written by the English poet about birds gathering together in the early spring on ‘seynt valentynes day whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate’, possibly, probably written in reference to the grand marriage of King Richard II of England and Anne of Bohemia (after 5 very unromantic years of negotiations). According to legend, it apparently started a tradition: In 1477 a woman in Norfolk seems to have written a letter - apparently the earliest Valentine - to her cousin calling him “my right well beloved Valentine.” By the Victorian Era, card giving had become a popular Valentine’s Day custom.

Who knows just precisely how or when or where it began, who proclaimed this as the day of love, billets doux, sweet nothings, gentle whispers and fervent glances. When did Valentine’s Day return to its seemingly pagan roots, the ritual dance around heart-shaped chocolates, laced-edged cards, candlelit dinners, and romance? And to what import? Did Mark Antony need Valentine’s Day to pull Cleopatra into his lustful embrace? Did Romeo need Valentine’s Day to inspire him to declare his passion for the young Juliet hovering breathlessly above in the moonlight? Did Valentine’s Day stir Napoleon’s amour for Josephine or elicit Darcy’s throwing himself at Elizabeth’s feet? No, I dare say not. It is true that one does not need this day to be a lover, to express desire, to recount unhesitatingly, ardently, passionately one’s undying love. No, not at all.

But it is a nice excuse to pause for a moment and do just that.

Valentine’s Day evokes a great philosophical debate chez nous year in and year out. Do we or don’t we? To Valentine’s Day or not to Valentine’s Day? And although he once swore that he would never ever buy me chocolates….”I will shower you with gifts,” he said, “buy you jewels, fill your arms with flowers, but I will not buy you candy. Chocolate is a vice like cigarettes and alcohol and I will not feed any vice.” He spouted his disdain for what he saw purely as a commercial scheme to sell candy and flowers, a foreign imported holiday, at that, and swore we would never celebrate Valentine’s Day. Yet that first February 14th together, a single chocolate heart was placed atop my pillow. And it spoke louder than any of his words.

And while we’ve had our ups and downs, and while we don’t celebrate many holidays, and those we do are lowkey and minimalist, there is one constant: chocolate.

Chocolate is synonymous with Valentine’s Day. To be honest, chocolate is synonymous in my home with most celebrations, festivities, holidays, and all days in between. Yet Valentine’s Day seems to call for something decadently chocolate, smooth and luxurious, something special. These small French chocolate puddings are incredibly sexy when eaten warm, served with salted butter caramel sauce, berry coulis, whipped cream, or a scoop of ice cream. But they are also spectacular at room temperature. Chilling will make them very dense and chewy but the flavor is still astonishingly good.

French Chocolate Pudding

Pudding au Chocolat

Makes about 10 depending on the size molds or ramekins you use.

Finely ground stale bread or dry wafer-type cookies – plain white bread, Challah, brioche, ladyfingers or digestive biscuits – are used to bind these puddings in place of flour and are a fabulous way to use up stale bread. Unlike the Anglo-saxon/American style of pudding in which chunks of bread soak up custard, the bread and cookies used for a French pudding are undetectable; these puddings are velvety smooth, creamy, incredibly rich and intensely chocolate without the bitter edge. Personalize the puddings with the addition of a bit of cinnamon, ground ginger, or espresso, Grand Marnier, Cointreau, rum, cognac, coffee liqueur, there are so many possibilities for these deep, lusciously chocolate puddings. 

7 ounces (200 grams) dark semisweet or bittersweet chocolat 70% cacao

5.3 ounces (150 grams) stale bread and/or plain wafer cookies or digestive biscuits

2 ⅔ cups (600 ml) milk – I use 2% lowfat or whole

½ cup (100 grams) sugar

3 large eggs

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon, optional or replaced by another flavoring

½ teaspoon vanilla

Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C). Lightly butter 10 muffin cups in a muffin tin or silicone mold or 10 individual ramekins. These puddings will be baked in a bain-marie, so the muffin tin or the ramekins need to sit comfortably inside a larger baking pan that will hold water.

Finely chop the chocolate on a cutting board; place the cookies and/or stale bread in a robot mixer, grinder, or processer and grind to a fine powder.

Place the milk and sugar in a large saucepan and bring up to the boil over low heat; add the chocolate and stir until the chocolate is just melted then stir in the cookie/bread crumbs. Remove from the heat.

Allow the chocolate milk to cool to warm, stirring often. Lightly beat the eggs in a measuring cup or small bowl; once the chocolate mixture has cooled, whisk three or four tablespoons of the warm liquid into the eggs in a slow stream just to warm the beaten eggs. Pour the eggs into the saucepan of warm chocolate mixture in a slow steady stream while whisking the mixture (we do not want the eggs to cook).

Divide the batter evenly among the cups of the muffin tin/silicone mold or the ramekins. Place these inside the larger baking pan and slide into the preheated oven. Carefully pour very hot tap water from a spouted measuring cup into the pan around the molds until the molds/tin/ramekins are immersed just halfway, being careful to not let any water get on/into the puddings.

Bake in the preheated oven in the water bath (bain-marie) for 25 – 30 minutes until the puddings are set.

Remove the baking pan very carefully from the oven so the water doesn’t slosh and wet the puddings or burn your hands. Very carefully (use oven mitts or a kitchen cloth) lift each pudding or the muffin tin out of the bain-marie water and place on a kitchen towel or cooling rack.

Serve the puddings warm with salted butter caramel sauce, berry coulis, whipped cream or a scoop of ice cream. These puddings are incredibly sexy when eaten warm, but are also quite fabulous at room temperature. Chilling will make them very dense and chewy but the flavor is still astonishingly good.

Salted Butter Caramel Sauce (Caramel au Beurre Salé)

Prepare the caramel sauce in advance to allow it to cool to room temperature and thicken before serving.

1 cup (200 grams) granulated white sugar

3 ½ tablespoons (50 grams) salted butter

1 cup (250 ml) heavy cream

Melt the sugar in a medium-sized saucepan over low to medium-low heat and cook until completely melted and caramel in color. Still on low heat, whisk in the butter in about 3 or 4 additions. Continuing to whisk, add the heavy cream in a slow stream; the caramel may foam up, but keep whisking, as it will calm down once all the cream is added and will turn to a smooth caramel. Once it is smooth and creamy, remove from the heat and allow to cool to room temperature before drizzling over the puddings.

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