One of my absolute favourite bits of food writing of all time comes from Julian Barnes’s The Pedant in the Kitchen, in which the master comic essayist waxes about an unmasterable chocolate dessert recipe aptly named the “Chocolate Nemesis”. This was the “I want to prove I can cook” sure-fail recipe of his social milieu for a while. The result of an attempt to conquer the recipe more often than not ended with an obligatory bowl of the brown sludge being proudly paraded as a mark of courage, before alternative contingency desserts that had been kept secretly simmering on the back burner were served.

When I entertain, my delicate ego dictates that I serve a dessert I can actually pull off. Since the odds of this are regretfully dismal (thank goodness I have a wife who’s a much better pastry chef than I am!), I’ve limited myself to honing a select few really well. Some of these can be whipped together at the eleventh hour, which I’ve found very useful at times when I find myself recklessly inviting people over for supper (never mind that the wife is throwing me murderous looks as I do so).

The best of these is the chocolate pot de crème. Served in a pretty dish and spiffed up with some gold leaves or decorative sprinkles, few would suspect that this rather sophisticated looking pudding is really effortless and foolproof to boot (unless they happen to also be readers of this column, of course!). Here is my recipe for achieving instant domestic god(dess) status: