Chocohotopots

Our answer

Nigella's Chocohotopots (from Feast) are small hot chocolate cakes with a gooey, melting centre. They are made with a combination of melted chocolate, butter, eggs, sugar and flour. Nigella developed the recipe in the UK and it uses good quality dark chocolate, preferably with 70% cocoa solids. This type of chocolate is used frequently in cooking but can also be eaten as it contains some sugar.

In the US you can buy baking chocolate and this is a form of chocolate that is rarely found in the UK. Most baking chocolate is unsweetened and although it will give a rich chocolate flavour to baked goods, for this recipe it should not be used as the Chocohotopots will not have enough sugar in them and this will affect both the flavour and the texture of the dessert.

For the US we prefer to use a good qualitybittersweet chocolate. This has slightly lower cocoa solids content than the comparative UK chocolate, at roughly 62%, but is a very close alternative. In some grocery stores you will also find Green & Black's and Lindt dark chocolate, both of which usually have 70% cocoa solids.