Serves 4.
Ingredients
- Scant 1 cup butter, plus extra for greasing
- 3-1/2 oz/100 g semisweet chocolate, broken into pieces
- 2 large eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup superfine sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
- 2 tbsp all purpose flour
- confectioners' sugar, for dusting
- lightly whipped cream, to serve
- Preheat the oven to 400 F. Grease 4 x 3/4 cup ovenproof dishes or ramekins and sprinkle superfine sugar.
- Place the butter and chocolate in a heatproof set over a pan of gently simmering water until melted. Stir until smooth. Let cool.
- Place the eggs, vanilla extract, superfine sugar, and flour in a bowl and whisk together. Stir in the melted chocolate mixture. Pour into prepared dishes and place on a baking sheet. Bake in the preheated oven for 12-15 minutes, or until well risen and set on the outside but still molten inside.
- Let stand for 1 minute, then turn out onto serving plates. Dust with confectioners' sugar and serve immediately with whipped cream.
The recipe makes 4 bubbly cakes. I thought we should re-name the recipe Icelandic Bubbling Cakes. V votes Volcanic Lava Cakes. Either way, they're fun to watch rising in the oven and oozing when they're freshly popped out.
ReplyDeleteNote on the ingredients:
1) Scant 1 cup of butter.
The recipe serves 4. So this means the 1 cup of butter = 1/2 stick of butter per cake! Yum, Yum! If you ever order molten lava cake at a restaurant and they're out, just go home and have yourself a 1/2 stick of butter. :)
2) Superfine sugar.
V looked for a box with a clear "Super Fine Sugar" at the grocery store. Apparently, this does not exist. We're assuming this means powered sugar.
Notes for the directions:
1) Preheat oven to 400 F.
Some people are destined to be Master Chefs. Some may aspire to Sous Chef. Others are dishwashers for life. We gave Steve, our official dishwasher, a chance to come up in the ranks. His first and only task to prove himself was to preheat the oven to 400F. We checked on the cakes at 10 min and were shocked to find them still in a liquid state. We then realized that Steve got a little sidetracked when learning to operate V's state of the art oven and had entered the oven temp to 350F. We tried to salvage this by upping the temp for about 10 more mins at 415 F, but the molten lava cakes turned out to be a bit pudding-y. Like I said before, some people are destined to be dishwashers.
2. Grease the cups and sprinkle with superfine sugar.
They really mean to grease the cups here. Oh, and don't forget the sugar sprinkling (oops.) You've already committed to 1/2 stick of butter per cake, so going easy on the grease and sugar layer here is sorta mute. If you want to replicate our textured look in the pic above, you can wing this step.
3. Place the butter and chocolate in a pan and simmer gently over water...
We microwaved the chocolate and butter instead. Be careful with this. I burned the chocolate a bit. I like to think the burnt chocolate added some texture.
- Clara
Er..in our case maybe best name would be "Not so Molten cakes." ;) The center was more a spongy consistency than runny... They can't all turn out great. ;) -Vanessa
ReplyDelete