Chocolate fon-don't

Having written on many occasions about my love of Masterchef in all its various guises, this weekend I now have a new-found respect for some of the more laughable contestants. As I've previously pointed out, the chocolate fondant is the dish of death on the show. They either leave it in the oven for too long so that it ends up as a plain, old chocolate sponge, or they panic and take it out too soon so it happily collapses into a gooey mess. Given that the programme is called 'Masterchef', you'd have thought that they might be able to get it right. But no.

So this weekend, fellow Masterchef enthusiast - Brother Alex - and I decided to try it out for ourselves. We followed the recipe to the letter, and took out the ramekins from the oven after precisely 12 minutes. They collapsed into gooey messes. But they tasted awesome; surely simply a matter of leaving them in the oven for longer? So tonight, with Alex's lovely girlfriend Holly round for dinner, we were confident that we'd get it right. Wrong! They were still too gooey!

Now I understand why the contestants keep insisting on trying to produce the perfect chocolate fondant, because it is a very tricky pud to master. But, to be completely honest, the gooey bit is so delicious that I'd quite happily eat / drink that without the sponge casing.