If you’re travelling around the Scottish islands, a trip to Iona Abbey is a must. But if you can’t make it in person, you can at least sample the food they offer visitors with this marvellous cookbook. Below is a recipe of their scrumptious chocolate pudding.

Iona Abbey Cookbook
By Anja Jardine
Published by Wild Goose

Chocolate puddle pudding with orange and cardamom
(optionally GF and DF)

Another Abbey favourite – I inherited the recipe when starting to work as the cook. I have since added some orange zest and cardamom to the mix, which makes it taste a bit more exotic. Leave these out if you want the original flavour. Best eaten freshly baked from the oven!

Serves 4

The sauce:
90g soft brown sugar
25g cocoa powder (not drinking chocolate)
200ml hot water from the kettle

The cake:
90g salted butter (or dairy free spread and a good pinch of salt)
90g caster sugar
Zest of one medium large washed orange
½ tsp of freshly ground cardamom seeds (slightly more if already ground)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
25g cocoa (not drinking chocolate)
90g self-raising flour (wheat or gluten free)

Preheat oven to 180 C (350 F) static/160 C (325 F) fan/gas 4-5.

Grease a 16 cm diameter/length deep (leakproof) baking tin or ovenproof dish.

Mix all the above ingredients together for the sauce in a jug or bowl. Set aside.

Cream butter and sugar with an electric whisk on highest speed for 2 minutes until pale and creamy. Add eggs, one by one, then the vanilla essence, orange zest and cardamom, while mixing.
Put the mixer aside.

Sieve flour and cocoa into the bowl, then fold into the mix with big movements, using a spatula or spoon, until just combined. Turn into the prepared tin.

Pour the chocolate sauce over the sponge mix, put into the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

Serve immediately with yoghurt, ice cream or cream.

Though best served straight from the oven, if you would like to pre-make it and reheat it later, use only half of the sauce for baking, and reheat for 10 minutes in a preheated oven at 150 C (300 F)
static/130 C (265 F) fan/gas 2 with the rest of the sauce poured over it.

The Iona Abbey Cookbook by Anja Jardine is published by Wild Goose, priced £16.99.