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Indulgent Chocolate Creations

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A guide to melt-in-your-mouth chocolate fondant

What is chocolate fondant?
‘Fondant’ is French for ‘to melt’ or ‘melting’. This is a very apt description of the centre of a
chocolate fondant dessert which remains liquid while cooking and oozes out when you
break it open with a spoon. The centre of this pudding literally melts in your mouth. Other
names for this popular sweet treat are ‘volcano pudding’ or ‘self-saucing pudding’. The
chocolate fondant mixture is essentially a cake batter with a high ratio of dark chocolate and

butter to flour, sugar and eggs. It’s made using a high cocoa percentage chocolate – usually
in the range of 70% and upwards. This gives the pudding an intense chocolate flavour,
aroma and contributes to the melting texture in the centre.

What makes this dessert a success is the extent to which the centre oozes and melts in your

mouth. Here are 5 key tips to help you achieve this:

1. Don’t over-whisk the eggs
It’s important to create as little volume as possible when you whisk the eggs. The more
air you incorporate into them, the more stable the mixture will become when it cooks

and the less runny the fondant centre will be.
2. Remember to temper the egg mixture
If you add all the warm chocolate and butter to the eggs at once, you run the risk of
overheating and cooking the eggs, creating a lumpy and unpleasant texture. Take care
to add a little chocolate mixture at a time and work it in before adding more.

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