The principle
Marmite in puddings sounds unhinged. It is not. The savoury-sweet combination has been a respectable culinary move since the first chef stuck a piece of bacon on a maple-syrup pancake, and Marmite is structurally the same trick: a salty, glutamate-rich savoury element placed against a sweet element to make both more interesting.
The reason it specifically works with chocolate and caramel is that Marmite’s Maillard-reaction compounds (the same browning chemistry that caramel develops when you cook sugar) overlap heavily with chocolate and caramel’s own flavour molecules. They are cousins at the molecular level. Putting them together is less of a clash than people expect.
The brownie
The starter project. Make a standard fudgy brownie. Whisk a teaspoon of Marmite into the melted butter before it goes into the chocolate. Bake as normal.
The Marmite is undetectable as Marmite. What you taste is a brownie that has slightly more salt than usual and noticeably more depth. People will ask you what you put in it and refuse to believe the answer.
If you want to push it further, make a caramel sauce (sugar, butter, cream) with a teaspoon of Marmite stirred in once it has come off the heat, and ribbon it through the brownie batter before baking. Marmite caramel brownie. Properly good.
The ice cream
A scoop of dark chocolate ice cream with a quarter-teaspoon of Marmite stirred through, frozen. The Marmite is just-perceptible as a savoury back-note that makes the chocolate taste more chocolatey rather than more Marmite-y. Particularly good as the cold side of a warm-pudding-and-ice-cream pairing.
Tin & Thyme published the canonical Marmite-chocolate ice cream recipe a few years back, which is worth tracking down if you want to do it properly.
The ganache
A standard dark chocolate ganache (equal weights of dark chocolate and double cream, melted together), with a teaspoon of Marmite stirred in at the end. Use it to fill macarons, dip strawberries, sandwich whoopie pies, or pipe onto small biscuits. The Marmite adds a savoury edge that stops the ganache being aggressively sweet.
This is the move that won the Marmite × M&S caramel sauce in the 2025 Christmas range a place on supermarket shelves. The principle is identical. If they can do it commercially, you can do it at home with a bowl of ganache.
The M&S Christmas hint
Speaking of which: M&S have, separately, launched a Marmite-caramel sauce as part of their 2025 Christmas food-to-order range (see the M&S Christmas caramel range). If you want the lazy version of all of the above, that sauce drizzled over vanilla ice cream is the entire dessert. No baking required.
Where it does not work
Anything fruit-led. Apple pies, lemon tarts, summer berries, fruit fool. The savoury-sweet trick relies on the sweet side being substantial enough to take a savoury counter-punch. Light fruity puddings just get muddied. Save the Marmite for the chocolate-and-caramel end of the dessert menu.
A note on quantities
Halve everything the first time you try this. Marmite is potent. Two grams in a brownie batter is enough. Five grams is too much. The line between “deeper, better brownie” and “this brownie tastes of Marmite” is narrow and worth respecting.
But yes, do try it. The first Marmite-chocolate-anything you eat will be a small revelation. The next twelve will be excellent puddings.
