For the Fork's debut blog I decided to start with, what else but dessert! My wife's favorite dessert has always been chocolate lava cake. For a while we were getting by with the frozen premade cakes in Albertsons freezer. The frozen cakes were not bad, but they were not outstanding either and one day they were gone. No longer stocked by the store nearest to our house, my late evening trips to the store for dessert were in serious trouble. And since a wise man once told me "a happy wife equals a happy life," I decided it was time to learn to make my own lava cakes. To my surprise it is an easy task and yielded a much better cake than the frozen variety.
After much searching I found a recipe that I liked and have been using ever since, lets get started.
Here is
a list of the ingredients you will need:6 oz. semi-sweet baking chocolate
6 oz. butter
3 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup flour
butter to grease ramekins
Bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes
You will also need four ramekins. Ramekins are little ceramic cups that you use to bake with. They are fairly inexpensive and can be bought just about anywhere. I found the set that I use at Shopko.
I would also recommend that you invest in a double boiler to melt your chocolate with. A double boiler is a two tier pan that you put water in the bottom and as it boils it heats the upper pan. The boiler has many uses, you can also use it to steam veggies or make cheese sauces. Of course if you don't want to invest in a boiler, you can melt your chocolate in a bowl in the microwave, just be careful not to scorch it. I picked up my boiler at Fred Meyer for around 25 bucks.
The first thing to do is start melting the chocolate in the boiler, set the burner to a low heat, as you want the water to steam but not boil too rapidly. The steam from the water should melt the chocolate slowly and evenly. If your using a microwave to melt your chocolate, use a low power setting and be careful not to burn it.
As you are waiting for the chocolate to melt, combine the eggs and sugar in a bowl and beat them together until the eggs start to turn white. If you have never beaten eggs to white before, be forewarned that this takes some time! Using a small hand mixer would be advisable and you can pick one up at WalMart for around 10 bucks. With a hand mixer you can get your eggs where you need them to be in about one or two minutes on low, using a wooden spoon and trying to beat them by hand will take over ten minutes. I think the ten dollars spent on the hand mixer is well worth it.
Once the chocolate is melted, give it a good stir and add the butter until it is melted into the chocolate mix. Once your butter and chocolate melted together and look smooth, pour the mixture into the eggs and stir together well. Next you will need to stir in the flour to thicken the mixture into a light batter. If you used a hand mixer for the eggs, you can use it again at this point to make your batter smooth with no lumps from unmixed flour.
Now you are ready to prepare the ramekins for the batter. This recipe will yield enough batter to make four cakes, or you could make two bigger cakes. Coat the inside of each ramekin with butter, taking care to cover the bottom and the corners. Then divide your batter into each ramekin, that's it your done and ready to bake!
Now you are ready to prepare the ramekins for the batter. This recipe will yield enough batter to make four cakes, or you could make two bigger cakes. Coat the inside of each ramekin with butter, taking care to cover the bottom and the corners. Then divide your batter into each ramekin, that's it your done and ready to bake!
The baking time is the trickiest part of this whole process. You can bake them longer for a less gooey center or you can bake them a shorter time for more lava. As you make your cakes you will need to experiment with the bake time in order to get it just right with your oven. What a great excuse to make more lava cake! The cake in my picture to the right was baked for 13 minutes and was a bit too gooey, but then again is there really a wrong way to serve up chocolate?Now you have the secret to an elegant and delicious dessert. The prep time on this recipe is only about 10 minutes and you can prepare your chocolate batter ahead of time as well. If you choose to make your batter early, I would not store it in the refrigerator as the chocolate will harden and that will alter your bake times. Good luck and I hope you enjoy the cake.
