Chocolate Molten Lava Cake - For a Sweet Punch

Recently found classified Ad on the “The Chocolate Times”:

Little Ms. Candy Dandy is looking for a life partner. Someone who is macho and tough on the outside and soft and warm on the inside.

Ms. Candy Dandy, your search is over.

And in a sweet way, my search for a good molten cake is over too! But I have to give out a loud "Phew" to have finally made this. I've jumped hurdles and crossed seas to get here. Ok..that sure is exaggerating. But, it did take a couple of tries to get here. 

Yesterday I wanted to make an eggless version of this as my mom is with us and she does not eat eggs. And so with all my brilliance, I substituted the 2 eggs with baking powder and vinegar. God knows what I did - but the lava cake was literally like a volcano..everything bubbled out of the cup and there were a couple of spoons of liquid batter still inside the cup after 15 mins of baking! LOL! But, it still tasted awesome and everyone actually ate all the liquid baked chocolate! Can you see we are a bunch of desperate dessert loving folks here?!

So, today, after I told my mom she had her share of liquid chocolate yesterday, I tried it one more with the regular recipe with eggs. And in all my enthu, I was buttering the ramekins and saw my beautiful blue ramekin slip out of my hand and fly down straight to the floor and shatter to pieces. Deep Breath. Count to 10. Telling myself this - "I'm (----) close to making it and will not let anything stop me". I told you I crossed hurdles.

Thanks to the Sweet Punch team for this recipe. It sure is a simple and easy to make dessert but tastes really gorgeous! And combine it with some Vanilla Bean ice cream from Haagen Dazs and boom..you've got yourself a hit on your hands! I've always loved eating this at Chillis - they have one of the best molten cakes ever!!! My bay area friends will agree..don't you guys??

Before you get started, pre heat the oven at 350F and grease 3-4 ramekins and set them aside.

In a mixing bowl, add 1/3 cup of sugar. You can use a small handheld mixer to do this job - but I took out my Bigfoot Kitchenaid as my whisk is still broken on my handheld.

Add a couple of eggs to the sugar and beat them both together until its light and fluffy.

 Measure out 1/2 cup of semi sweet chocolate chips and add to a mixing bowl that you can put on top of a double boiler to melt.

Add water to a small pan and boil it well. The bottom of the bowl on top should not touch the water in the small bowl below. But, it should be sitting comfortable so that the steam from the water melts out all the chocolate chips.

 There's its all melting...

Once the chocolate is melted, switch off the stove but let the bowl still sit on top of the hot water. Add about 1/4 lb ( 1 stick) of butter - chopped to the melted chocolate. Let this just sit for a couple of mins and then stir it - you'll see that all of the butter melts in the heat and you get a beautiful ganache like liquid chocolate. Now, take a min and decide if you just want to eat it like this or you'd like to continue with the rest of the recipe!

Greedy you...always needing more. Just like me.

Add all the melted butter chocolate mix to the eggs-sugar mixture.Stir well.

Add 1/4 cup of all purpose flour to the wet ingredients. Just mix well with a spatula until the flour is incorporated well.

There's the final batter. 

Pour gently into the well buttered ramekin and fill about half the cup.

Place all the ramekins in a baking tray and bake for about 10 mins. Mine is actually a little bit more done. I think I should have removed it about a couple of mins earlier. But, of course I was busy cleaning my floor of broken ramekin bits :( - there's got to be an excuse, right? The smaller ones of course got cooked completely and the bigger ones had a little bit of the molten batter left at the center. So, if you want it to really flow out, take it out exactly in 10 mins.

Here's one with a little molten cake inside. The first one I took out had the most molten center and I hurriedly placed the ice cream on top to serve before I got a picture. That's the one at the bottom and you can't really see just the molten center. Oh well..there's always a next time for that picture.

Serve the hot cake with a cold scoop of icecream. Use the best quality vanilla ice cream  you can find. And for me, that is the Vanilla Bean from Haagen Daas.  That is the only white ice cream I eat! LOL! I actually used the single serving cup available in stores - that's why you see a long straight scoop - it's scooped out right out of the box. And top off with some chocolate sauce and a little red berry and some powdered sugar. If you're a whipped cream kind of girl, make yourself happy!

Labor of love and River of Lust..oh crap..I'm so not poetic! 

At least, I can still eat this.

My little one actually enjoyed it plain like this.

 Don't wait any longer. Just go make it and eat it.

Enjoy. Peace out!