Chocolate Molten Lava Cake

In accordance to my mission statement for this blog, this entry will fall into my pursuit for the perfect chocolate goodness and curiosities about baking/food preparation. 

 A few evenings ago my mom and I decided to experiment in the kitchen.  She wanted something chocolate and I wanted to bake.  So I found a recipe for Chocolate Molten Lava Cake on the internet (epicurious.com in case you were wondering) and we decided to try it out.  Fortunately, it had few enough ingredients (and we maintain such a well stocked kitchen) that we had everything we needed.  It was a blissfully simple recipe and yielded very good results.  A little too eggy for me, I would like to tinker with the recipe and see if I can improve it.  But over all, a very good dessert.  Herein follows the recipe:

Five ounces of bittersweet (we used semisweet) chocolate, chopped
Ten tablespoons unsalted butter
Three large eggs
Three large egg yolks
One and one half cups powdered sugar
One half cup all purpose flour

 Essentially, what must be done is melt the chocolate and butter together then add it to a whisked combination of eggs and sugar.  Then you add the flour and pour the batter into buttered custard cups.  The cakes are baked until the sides are set but the center is soft and runny (give or take 10 minutes.  Ours took 13.)  When you're done, you run a sharp knife around the cakes in the cups and placing a plate on top, carefully flip them over.  That was the difficult part for us.  Ours stuck to the bottom of the custard cups and so we had to shake them loose, causing the "molten" part to ooze everywhere.  They weren't the prettiest of things, but they sure were delicious. 


Improvements I might make would include experimenting with adding raw sugar to the batter.  It would stiffen it a little, maybe give it less of an egg-foam texture (it was slight, but it was definitely there for me).  Perhaps even using one less egg and substituting oil and a little water, see how that does.  It would make it a bit more fudgey, which I think would be spectacular. 

That's all for now...gotta run and help mom make Chicken Broccoli Braid....mmmmmmm!
~Samantha