You pour boiling water over the top of the batter before it goes in the oven. That is the part that sounds wrong and it is the part that makes the whole thing work.
What comes out is a self-saucing pudding. Cake on top, thick chocolate sauce underneath, made in one dish with no separate sauce to prepare. Fifteen minutes of work and forty in the oven.
How the water becomes sauce
The batter goes into the dish first. Then a layer of brown sugar and cocoa gets sprinkled over the top of it, dry. Then the boiling water goes over everything.
In the oven the batter rises up through the liquid while the sugar and cocoa dissolve down into it. They swap places. By the time it is done you have a baked sponge sitting on top of a pool of dark sauce that formed itself.
Do not stir after adding the water. The separation depends on the layers staying put.
Coffee powder against the cocoa
Two tablespoons of instant coffee powder goes into the dry mixture and you will not taste coffee in the finished dish.
Coffee sharpens chocolate. It deepens the bitter notes and stops half a cup of cocoa and two cups of brown sugar from reading as flatly sweet. Leaving it out is an option and the cobbler is noticeably less interesting for it.
Split the cocoa and the sugar
Half the cocoa and one cup of the brown sugar go into the batter. The rest of both get sprinkled over the top before the water.
Getting this backwards is the easiest mistake in the recipe. Everything in the batter gives you a very sweet cake and no sauce. The topping half is what dissolves into the water and becomes the sauce layer.
Blend the wet ingredients
Buttermilk, melted butter and vanilla go into a jug and get pureed with a stick blender until smooth before they meet the flour.
Melted butter and cold buttermilk want to separate. Blending emulsifies them so the fat distributes evenly through the batter instead of pooling. Whisking hard by hand gets you most of the way if you have no stick blender.
Then fold that into the dry mixture. Fold rather than beat. This is a soft batter and overworking it makes the sponge tough.
Chocolate chips and pecans on top
Both go on after the sugar and cocoa layer and before the water.
The chips melt into the sauce and thicken it further. Toasted pecans stay on the surface and give you crunch against what is otherwise an entirely soft dessert. Toast them first if they came out of the bag raw, since it takes five minutes and doubles their flavour.
Self-raising flour, and the substitute
One cup of self-raising flour carries its own raising agent, which is what lifts the sponge up through the water. No separate baking powder in the ingredient list because it is already in the flour.
If you only have plain flour, add one and a half teaspoons of baking powder and a pinch of salt per cup and sift them together. It behaves the same.
Baking and serving
160C fan or 180C conventional, forty minutes, until just set. The top should look like cake and spring back lightly. Underneath will still be liquid and that is correct.
Serve warm, straight from the dish, with vanilla ice cream and fresh raspberries. The ice cream melting into the hot sauce is most of the appeal, and the raspberries cut through the sweetness.
It does not keep especially well. The sauce gets absorbed into the sponge overnight and you lose the two layers. Eat it the day you make it.
Getting the dish size right
A two and a half litre baking dish. Smaller and the water will overflow as everything rises. Much larger and the sauce spreads too thin to pool properly underneath.
Nut swaps
Walnuts or hazelnuts work in place of pecans. Leave nuts out entirely if you need to, though the dessert loses its only textural contrast, so consider a crunchy topping at the table instead.
Old Style Chocolate Cobbler
Description
A self-saucing chocolate cobbler with cocoa, coffee, chocolate chips and toasted pecans, served warm with ice cream.
Ingredients:
Instructions
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Preheat the oven to 160C fan-forced (180C conventional) and grease a 2.5 litre baking dish.
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Sift the flour and half the cocoa powder into a large bowl. Add 1 cup of the brown sugar and the coffee powder.
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Combine the buttermilk melted butter and vanilla in a large jug and puree with a stick blender until smooth. Fold into the flour mixture.
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Spoon the batter into the baking dish and sprinkle over the remaining brown sugar and cocoa. Top with the chocolate chips and chopped pecans.
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Pour the boiling water over the top without stirring. Bake 40 minutes, until just set.
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Serve warm with vanilla ice-cream and fresh raspberries..
Note
Oven is 160C fan-forced or 180C conventional, around 350F. Do not stir after adding the boiling water; the layers need to stay separate for the sauce to form. Half the cocoa and one cup of the brown sugar go in the batter, the rest is sprinkled on top. Use a 2.5 litre baking dish. Best eaten the day it is made, since the sauce absorbs into the sponge overnight.
