100 days of Chocolate Biscuit Pudding

“100 days” is a group-based activity where each member of the group commits to a specific creative project for 100 days. These creative projects could be art, sewing, writing, drawing, singing, and a multitude of others. For my second ‘100 days’ project, I’ve chosen cooking/baking. Those who know me know that I stress-cook. A deadline is looming? You’ll find me in the kitchen. A rocky call with my parents? There I am by the oven. My country is going to pieces? Look at this complicated recipe I managed to cook to perfection! Considering how stressed I am with life right now, cooking/baking felt like a good project in which to invest my 100 days. In deciding what to cook/bake, I decided to go with a quintessential Sri Lankan dessert: Chocolate Biscuit Pudding (CBP).

Here’s the catch, though. Every single person I talk to, every single person who has published a CBP recipe, seems to do it in their own unique way. I have no choice but to conclude that much like the humble Sri Lankan parippu, the CBP is also of various iterations, each unique to the household that created it. My challenge is to create a signature CBP that is my contribution to the CBP diversity out there.

(As I write this after a generous tumbler of mulled wine, I wonder if I should have written this at another time. Oh well.)

Here are the criteria for my signature CBP. I’ve kept it pretty simple:

• Must be CHOCOLATE-Y. Not the icing sugar/confectioner’s sugar grainy sweetness. I want true chocolate goodness in it.
• Not too sweet. Strolling through my 30s here. Should probably start taking health seriously. Besides, I who drink my tea without sugar, will not survive having to taste test sugary desserts over 3 months.
• Boozy! How much booze can I get into this dessert without it having to be branded a BOOZY CBP? I want it to be CBP, without any adjectives, except perhaps – “the best”

All projects need a plan; at least, all projects where I’m leading do. So my plan is thus:

There are three main components to a CBP: the filling, the biscuits, and the soaking liquid.

I will experiment with each of these components to identify a good, reliable recipe for each. Having done some extensive research, the filling is the one that is the most diverse, so I will spend at least half my 100 days on perfecting the filling.

I also plan to play around with this a little: what if we flavour the filling? Is tea flavoured chocolate filling a thing? I will NOT use mint – do not even mention the M-word – but I could always take the easy way out and chuck a(n un)healthy amount of nutella in the mix. So many options.

Marie biscuits are the gold standard.

Or so I’m told. To be fair, in my heart of hearts, I believe this too. But it has to be Mailban Gold Marie; not the Munchee Tikiri Mareee. I don’t care how catchy their jingle is. Having said that, I’m not in a place where sourcing Maliban Gold Marie is an easy task. However, there are many other biscuits at hand that look like good soaking material: Tim-Tams, for a start.

What does booze do to milk?

Again with the booze, yes. Why stop at adding booze to the chocolate filling? The soaking milk seems to be a good candidate to sneak in some more booze. Or flavour. Perhaps a ginger infused milk soak so the CBP is chocolate-ginger-y?

All in all, this is the first of (hopefully) many blog posts where I document my CBP creation process. While I am accountable to 6 other people for my 100 days project, this felt like a good way to revive the blog.

This weekend we start on the filling; Not sure where I will go with this, but the possibilities are endless.