Honey Chocolate Pudding Cake: Perfected

As you may recall, a while back I posted a recipe for chocolate pudding cake as an example of how to convert a recipe to honey. Since then, I have tested the recipe, and found that a little tweaking made it much better.The original didn't have enough pudding, and the cake did not rise through the syrup as it was supposed to. Both problems have been solved.
So here it is, a delicious, puddingy, chocolatey, cakey dessert.

Flip upside down to serve

Honey Chocolate Pudding Cake

-pudding
1/2 cup honey
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups milk
1/8 tsp cinnamon

-cake
3/4 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup honey
1/3 cup milk
2 Tbsp melted butter
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350*. Have an 8x8 pyrex cake pan ready. 
In a small saucepan, mix the pudding ingredients together over low heat, and heat, stirring occasionally, until it comes to a boil, but do not let boil over. (it will try to if you let it)
While the pudding ingredients are heating, mix the cake batter. Blend the dry ingredients together in a small bowl, make a well in the middle, and add the wet ingredients. Do not mix into a batter until the pudding mixture comes to a boil.
When the pudding mixture comes to a boil, pour it into the 8x8 cake pan. Quickly blend the cake ingredients together to make a batter, and drop by scant teaspoonfulls evenly across the top of the pudding mixture.
Bake at 350* for about 25 minutes, until the pudding on the bottom seems to be boiling well, and the top of the cake seems cooked and dry. Some of the pudding may boil through onto the top, this is fine.
Remove the cake from the oven and let cool for at least 10 minutes before serving. The cooling time is very important to allow the pudding to thicken, otherwise the bottom will be more milky instead of puddingy.
With a large spoon, scoop cake and pudding out onto small plates. This cake is great by itself, but even better with whipped cream or ice cream.
This cake is very rich, so a little goes a long way. If you have leftovers, the cake is also good cold and stores well in the fridge... until someone with a spoon comes along and devours it, that is.

Some of the Cake has been devoured

Batter and Pudding ready to go

-A note on cocoa powder. The first three times I made this recipe, I used Ghirardelli cocoa powder. It was delicious. This last time, (the only time I remembered to take pictures), I used Hershey's "special dark" cocoa powder. The result was... less than stellar. I purchased the hersheys only because the store was out of Ghirardelli cocoa powder. It is much darker than regular cocoa powder, and smells as though they achieved this by burning some (if not all) of the cocoa beans to charcoal. It is unpleasant, bitter, dark, and does not taste like chocolate (but then again, when has hersheys ever tasted like chocolate?).

In conclusion, you can use a little less than a cup of high quality cocoa powder and make a dessert that is worthy of the gods, or you can use the same amount of cheap cocoa powder and have a dessert that is merely 'meh'.
It is your choice.Choose wisely.
-Zay

How to Convert a Recipe to Honey: Honey Chocolate Pudding Cake

Recently I went to over to my Aunt Mary's for dinner. Knowing Tyler and I don't eat refined sugar, she had made a special 'sugar free' chocolate pudding cake for us. Unfortunately, she used fake chemical sweeteners in it, which destroyed the good flavor of the chocolate as well as making me feel a bit queasy about eating it.  With this in mind, I thought I would try to write an easy guide to converting a recipe to honey, which is good for you and usually tastes as good or better than sugar.
Converting a recipe to a honey version is usually quite easy, as long as the recipe already calls for a liquid. I will begin with a basic chocolate pudding cake recipe link. I chose this one because it has a lot of good reviews. Look at the original ingredients list. 

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
2/3 cup white sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups hot water

The original instructions tell you to first make a cake batter out of some of the ingredients, sprinkle others on top, and pour hot water over all before baking. In theory, the water dissolves the ingredients sprinkled on top, the cake batter rises through this syrup, and a pudding layer forms on the bottom. I can work with this.  
The original recipe cake batter ingredients are:
3/4 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
3 Tbsp oil
This calls for both sugar and a liquid. Since honey is about twice as sweet as sugar, you want to use half as much honey as it calls for sugar, and reduce the liquid by that amount. I will also replace the oil with butter because it makes everything delicious. This changes the recipe to:
3/4 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup honey
scant 1/4 cup milk
3 Tbsp melted butter
Obviously, there is no way to tell if these proportions are right without testing the recipe, but they should be close enough to make a good product.

In the original recipe, the next step was to sprinkle cocoa and sugar on top of the cake batter, and pour hot water on top. Here is where the recipe will diverge from the original. The original sprinkling ingredients were:
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup mini chocolate chips
and the hot water to pour on top was:
1 1/4 cups hot water mixed with
1 tsp vanilla.
In my version it will all be mixed together into a syrup which will be poured on top of the cake batter. I will reduce the water by the amount of honey I replace the brown sugar with, and replace the chocolate chips with a little extra cocoa powder. I will also add a dash of cinnamon to cut the honey flavor without being detectable itself. Leaving us with:
1/2 cup honey
1/3 cup cocoa powder
3/4 cup hot water
1 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp cinnamon
and that's it for the most part. All that's left is testing and fine tuning the recipe. The final version is:

Honey Chocolate Pudding Cake
Cake
3/4 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup honey
scant 1/4 cup milk
3 Tbsp melted butter
Syrup
1/2 cup honey
1/3 cup cocoa powder
3/4 cup hot water
1 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp cinnamon

Mix together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt. Stir in the honey, milk, and butter. Spread into an 8x8 cake pan.
In a small pot, mix together the honey, cocoa, hot water, and cinnamon. Heat to near boiling. remove from heat, add vanilla, and pour over the cake.
Bake in a 350* oven for 30 to 35 minutes until the top looks dry. Let sit for at least 10 minutes before serving.

** disclaimer**
This is an untested recipe, put here to demonstrate the ease of converting a recipe to honey. I will test it as soon as I can, because I love chocolate, but I don't have any cocoa powder right now. It might be that the proportions are off. The cake might not rise up through the syrup, it might not be sweet enough, or too sweet, or not rich enough, or too rich. I don't know. The water in the syrup might need to be replaced with milk, or some other flavor extract might need to be added (rum and maple come to mind). The syrup might need to be added to the pan first, the cake batter spooned on top. Only testing will tell, but this recipe should be reasonably close to good.
</perfectionist>

Bread Pudding with Raisins and Honey

I like Bread Pudding (would I be blogging it if I didn't?) and it is very simple to make.
Bread Pudding - makes 1 loaf pan (serves approximately 2 as breakfast)
1 cup milk
2 eggs
3-4 slices of bread, cubed
1/4 cup raisins
1 tbsp butter
1/4 cup maple, honey, agave, or whatever
cinnamon, vanilla, etc
Cut your bread slices into cubes and place in the loaf pan, drizzle with honey and raisins and toss to coat. In a small bowl beat the eggs together with the milk. If using maple or agave, add to the milk egg mixture, add vanilla and a dash of cinnamon if using. Pour gently over the bread cubes, pushing down with a fork or spoon so all the cubes are coated. Dot the top of the pudding with butter. Bake at 350* for 45 minutes to an hour until the center is raised and set. Remove from oven and spoon out onto plates.
I enjoy how the top of the pudding is crispy where the bread cubes stuck out of the custard, and the underside is smooth and creamy. This recipe isn't overly sweet - but part of the pleasure is trying to get a raisin in every bite.

Double Batch of Bread Pudding

This recipe is pretty adaptable as well. You can use pretty much any neutral-tasting bread product, like leftover waffles, pancakes, biscuits, etc. Even leftover french toast can be used with good results. The seasonings are also pretty forgiving. My father likes to add a dash of nutmeg - I enjoy spreading a few handfuls of slivered almonds on top before baking. I have had it with crushed pineapple, apple, various berries, cranberries, apples, etc. added to the mix.
You can also make this a dessert dish - Increase the sweetener and serve with a lemon or orange custard like the one at the end of the Crepes recipe.