For the last few days, I’ve been posting the courses in a four course meal I made last weekend. These are the previous courses:
First course: Artichoke Fritters
Second course: Pear and Pecan Salad
Third course: Mussels and Frites
If you are serving a meal in courses, it goes without saying that you better bring it on dessert. Because it is Valentine’s Day, I wanted to do something a bit sexy also. I think these chocolate lava cakes did the trick.
Hot lava!
While these little cakes are delicious and gooey on the inside, they are very easy to make.
Chocolate Lava Cake (Recipe from Young and Hungry)
Makes 4 cakes- 4 ounces semi-sweet baking chocolate
- 4 Tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1 large egg
- 1/3 Cup sugar
- Pinch of Salt
- 1 Tablespoon flour
Very simple stuff.
The first step before you start mixing things up is to butter your cupcake tin and lightly dust it with flour. When these guys are done, they will be pretty fragile. You want to make sure there isn’t any sticking.
Probably the most important step.
Then melt your chocolate and butter over a double boiler. This is really easy to rig. Get a pot and fill it with a few cups of water and get it boiling. Then place your bowl over it and the steam will gently melt your ingredients.
You could melt it in the pan directly but you run the risk of scorching your chocolate which would be disaster.
Double boilers do not have to be fancy.
You will end up with a really smooth and creamy chocolate sauce.
This could double as a soup course.
Then in a separate bowl, mix together all of your other ingredients and combine well. Then pour in your chocolate sauce and stir it up until it is one smooth batter.
The integration.
Then distribute evenly in your cupcake tins. As you can see, I wasn’t so good at the evenly part.
Ready to go.
Either bake these immediately at 350 or you can store them in your fridge until you are ready to use them. Remember to take them out of the fridge about 30 minutes before baking to let the ingredients come to room temperature a bit.
The original recipe said to bake for 12 minutes, but mine took closer to 15. I think my oven runs a little cold though. They are done when the crusts just start to crack. You should be able to jiggle them and see the middles wiggle a bit.
After 15 long minutes.
Let them sit for about 3 minutes out of the oven. If you try to do anything with them right away, they will just collapse.
Then wrap the whole cupcake tin in foil and flip it over!
Foiled!
Tap gently on the tins and the cakes should come right out. 3/4 of mine were perfect which was pretty good. There is usually one that doesn’t make it.
Then transfer your cakes gently to a plate and dig in!
Goo is good.
This was such a great final course. The cupcake sized portion is the perfect amount as these guys are really rich.
I hope you liked my four course meal. I know I did.
If you liked this last course, you can use the below icons to share it with friends, lovers, or random people on the Internet.
whoa, these look simultaneously dainty and manly. and as always, the pictures are dynamite. this week of courses has been really cool – you should keep doing this!
Beautiful dessert!
I love these! I especially used to love when you were making these to woo a girl and I got to eat one of the broken ones. This seems like the perfect way to end a Valentine’s Day dinner.
@Karolinka27: Wait, guys cook for girls to impress them?
(Here’s hoping Pollo con Arroz a la Bill goes over well tonight…)
These look amazing!!! Thanks for sharing, my friend. As I’m a chocoholic you found my weak spot with this recipe and I am going to be buying some chocolate to try this out! :-)
mmmmmmmmmmmm, you’re killing me!!
Nick, my friend, these were AWESOME! (Note the past tense… :-) My wife and I along with our neighbours pretty much inhaled them.
Thanks for the comments everyone. Maybe I will have to do something like this in the future also. It seems like people liked the courses thing.
@Sam Nice work! I think that may be a record for a reader making a dish as quickly as possible after posting ;)
Have a good friday everyone!
i think i’ll do mine in little individual ramakins
that whole flip-it-over manoeuvre looks prime for failure in my hands!
Looks really good ! And your pictures are fantastic. :]
Nick, you caught me at the right moment… what can I say? :) I am glad you did?
totally made these with my girlfriends for a tastyyyyy dessert. perfect size, perfect yumminess.
Love that molten goodness! My favourite is always the one that doesn’t make it.. because then I get to have it aaaaalll to myself :D
[...] brownies, Joy’s layered devil’s food cake with raspberries and, oh my gosh, Nick’s chocolate lava cakes floating around the Internet. It’s true that I like my desserts chocolate—the more [...]