Chocolate Spice-Cake Pudding

We created this intense "bread pudding" using chocolate spice cake instead of bread and baked it in a Charlotte mold with a custard adapted from a recipe in Maida Heatter's Book of Great Desserts (Random House, 1991).

Yield: serves 10

For the Cake

10 tbsp. butter
2 ¹⁄₂ cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1 ¹⁄₂ tsp. ground ginger
¹⁄₂ tsp. salt
¹⁄₂ tsp. ground cloves
¹⁄₂ tsp. dry mustard
¹⁄₂ tsp. freshly ground black pepper
¹⁄₂ cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
2 eggs
1 cup dark or light molasses
1 cup strong coffee, cooled
2 oz. bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled
1 tsp. ground cinnamon

For the Custard and Serving

2 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped
4 cups milk
1 cup heavy cream
6 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
<a href="http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Chocolate-Sauce">Chocolate Sauce</a>

Instructions