Chocolate Fondant with Crème Anglaise

Chocolate fondant served with crème anglaise is a pastry must. It’s a quick dessert to make, very simple to put together and it doesn’t require many ingredients: chocolate (it’s up to you to choose your favourite), butter, eggs, sugar and a little flour.

Obviously, you’ll also need a little fleur de sel which, as well as waking up the palate, pairs magnificently with chocolate. So I’d advise you not to skip this little detail 😛

Personally, even though I love chocolate, I don’t enjoy chocolate that’s too strong in flavour. For a chocolate recipe like this one, the ideal is to buy a quality couverture chocolate like Valrhona chocolate. In any case, choose a chocolate that YOU like (whether it’s dark chocolate, more or less strong, or milk chocolate, or do as I do, a mix of both) 🙂

What I love about this dessert is its suuuuper melting texture in the mouth. But for that, you’re going to have to tame your oven. I’ve indicated 25 to 30 minutes of baking in the recipe; it’ll be up to you to keep an eye on it and adapt this time to YOUR oven.

For example, with my oven, I went for 25 minutes of baking at 165°C but it wasn’t quite baked yet and I extended it several times by 1 or 2 minutes. In the end, next time I’ll go straight for 30 minutes.

Finally, I can only advise you to make your own crème anglaise (no going to the supermarket to buy a carton, no no no! ).

Also use a vanilla pod rather than extract to get a real, good vanilla flavour. I promise, crème anglaise isn’t that hard to make. I can already hear the “yes, but I don’t have a thermometer!” You can manage perfectly well without…

heat the cream over a medium heat, stirring constantly. You’ll see, it will thicken slowly until it coats the spatula. To check this, draw a horizontal line across the spatula with your finger; the cream mustn’t run. And to be sure of getting a lovely crème anglaise (and to avoid the unpleasant little lumps that can form), you can pass the cream through a fine sieve.

By the way, a few words about the crème anglaise recipe. Originally, I was making a flan mixture (Juchamalo‘s recipe) but I stupidly forgot to add the cornflour. Oh dear! Rather than throwing it away, I told myself I’d cook it anyway to turn it into a crème anglaise.

So it’s not a “traditional” crème anglaise recipe (there’s cream as well as milk and a mix of yolk and whole egg) but I found it so good, so smooth (even though I never eat it) that I’m sharing my failure anyway 😛

This chocolate fondant is even better enjoyed at room temperature, alongside its crème anglaise.

I recommend storing the fondant at room temperature (wrapped in cling film) and the crème anglaise in the fridge (for up to 48 hours).