Will Workout for Hot, Rich Chocolate Pudding Cake with Ice Cream

It wasn’t working. The new workout wasn’t working out for us. We gave it two weeks but read me out on this one: we don’t have sufficient weights to continue and will some day return with the hundreds of dollars worth of weights needed to perform ChaLean Extreme. This is a decent workout but does require the correct equipment. We just weren’t feeling it after the first week. Well, we kind of were and then I admitted to myself that I prefer to be drenched with sweat and shaking at the end (which apparently they were on the dvd but we were not)- something hardcore where you know you felt like you were dying a few times. I didn’t like the 5 lbs. I put on with the strength training either…even after the soreness wore off.

I was fooling myself because I have done a handful of other programs where I felt better, stronger, healthier and this wasn’t cutting it….plus it was going to “eat up” 3 months and I don’t like to waste time. We are going back to a trusted workout, one in which I know achieves results, requires 6 weeks and has an actual maintenance routine that isn’t extremely “motivationally” difficult to do (as I could see the previous one being). I also lost 20 lbs. using this program (Slim in 6 with Debbie Sieber) about 4 years ago while going to college, in my first studio apartment. In part, due also to the strict phase 1 of the South Beach diet (back in that fad) that I was doing simultaneously but I am watching my calorie-intake now and am not expecting to lose that much weight…I don’t think I have that much to lose. I’m curvy but that said, it’s not as if my genetic makeup would allow me to transform my body into something considered thin and I’m past those naive teenage days where I though that I could.

After discussing the workout issue, how about some chocolate? I see nothing wrong with this. This is no ordinary chocolate- it’s a recipe that I found while home for the holidays from my mom’s issue of Woman’s Day and involves ice cream and rich pudding cake…not really pudding as much as molten, yummy, rich cake. Last week I was craving something sweet and decided to make half of this dish. I shared with Greg, who said that it would be completely fine with him if I made this again very soon (and he doesn’t like super-rich desserts that often). The picture reminds me of mud pie, not to be confused with pants pie à la Drop Dead Fred (that includes vodka and actual mud-ask him for the recipe…it’s a movie folks.) Poor Fred caught cornflakes disease but quickly recovered. (I’m still in the movie…I’m moving to the recipe.)

Hot Chocolate Pudding Cake with Ice Cream
Serves 6 (or you 6 times)

Ingredients:
6 tbsp butter
1 oz semisweet chocolate, chopped
1 large egg yolk
1 cup flour
1 ¼ cups sugar
2/3 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
2 ½ cups milk
2 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup brown sugar
vanilla ice cream

Preheat the oven to 350. Microwave butter and chocolate in a bowl until melted. Add the egg yolk. In another bowl, mix flour, ¾ cup sugar, 1/3 cup cocoa powder, baking powder and salt. Stir in ½ cup milk, vanilla and the butter mixture. Spread into an ungreased, shallow 2 qt. baking dish.

Mix the remaining ½ cup sugar, remaining 1/3 cup cocoa powder and brown sugar in another bowl and sprinkle over batter. Heat the remaining 2 cups of milk until simmering (microwave works) and slowly pour over the mixture in the baking dish (don’t stir). Bake for 40 to 50 minutes-keep an eye on this towards that time because it won’t take long to burn. The top will be a cake/brownie texture so check it with a toothpick, inserted in the center, some moist crumbs should be attached or however you want it to come out…it’s chocolate and hard to go wrong.

Spoon into bowls and add a scoop (or two) of vanilla ice cream on the side. Serve immediately or pudding layer will be absorbed by the cake layer….which really isn’t that heartbreaking because it’s all good.