Pear and chocolate pudding

A beautifully quick recipe (as you'd expect), adapted from Nigella Express. We ate it when Uncle Dom and Auntie Michelle came to stay (and fought them for the leftovers - it makes enough for 6 very large portions).

You'll need:

2 large cans of pear halves (in juice, rather than sugared)
125g plain flour
125g sugar
25 cocoa powder
150g butter
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

First of all, stick the oven on at about 200 degrees C. You'll also need to fish out an ovenproof dish, and grease it with a little butter/oil.

Drain the pears (keep the juice, you might need it later on), and arrange them nicely at the bottom of the dish (you may have to slice some of them in half - mine were huge).

Stick everything else in the food processor (hurrah! no creaming butter and sugar together), and blitz, until you get a brown batter. Ideally it needs to be a soft, dropping consistency - I must have been using quite small eggs, as mine was quite stiff. If that's the case, just add a little of the pear juice, blitz again, and all will be well.

Splodge the batter over the top of the pears (doesn't matter if they poke through - the sponge will rise to cover them), and bake in the oven for 30 minutes (the top should be not too wobbly when you take it out).

Let the pudding stand for 5 or 10 minutes (if you can wait that long), and then divide up. It should be beautifully runny inside - a gorgeous, chocolatey sauce that contrasts really well with the pears.

In fact, I'd go as far as to say that this is the pudding to make for someone who really isn't sure about pears at all - they'll be converted very quickly.