The first time I ever had Chocolate Lava Cake, it was at a fancy restaurant with my parents where we had to order it at the beginning of the meal because of the "extremely long" preparation time. I remember cutting my fork through the thick outer cake layer to find warm liquid chocolate oozing all over the plate. I was infatuated, obsessed, and have squealed at the delight of finding it on any dessert menu ever since. Because this dessert was made out to be so complex and hard-to-get in my eyes, I never even thought about trying to make it on my own. That is, until the other night when I had a fierce chocolate craving and I decided to google recipes just to check.
I read multiple recipes because I didn't trust how easy they all were. I assumed there must be hidden steps or tricks missing that would make it so time consuming and advanced but quickly learned how simple it really was.
Here is a basic recipe I started with and I'll take you through how I changed it:
Heat the oven at 400*
- 2 tablespoons butter (I used Earth Balance!)
- 1/3 cup organic sugar
- 2 oz chocolate (I used my the other half of a rose/raspberry Dogoba Bar I had)
- 1 large egg
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 pinch salt
- 3 tablespoons flour
I mixed the sugar and eggs together until well blended and added in the pinch of salt.
I melted my chocolate with the earth balance and added it to the mix along with the 3 tbl flour. I looked up and next to my mixing bowl I saw my french press with left-over coffee in it from the morning. You better believe I poured some in. I also added a few tbls of almond butter, because..well I love almond butter, and then of course wanted some kick so I added some cayenne pepper (A few solid shakes). I tasted it and decided to add a few more turns of sea salt to perfect my dynamic spicy-savory-sweet combo. YUM!
I coated two of the holes in my cupcake pan with olive oil and a light dusting of sugar, and filled them up 3/4 of the way. I dropped a few chocolate chips in the middle of each and sunk them a bit just to ensure extra gooey goodness when I broke those babies open.
I cooked them at 400* for about 10-12 minutes. You can stick a toothpick in to check if they are done if you want, but do it on the outer side of the the cake (for clearly you don't want the center to be dry and cooked through or you will have no lava to flow down your chocolate mountain!)
I made a compote of mashed strawberries and bananas to top it off and then I went to lava town!
These cakes were so amazing and decadent and took so little time. I'm really wondering what was going on in that restaurant kitchen to take so long....
