Lava. And Its Chocolate Incarnation

I ended up at an impromptu dinner party last night at a local restaurant. They ordered for me because I didn't know about it until they'd already sat down, and my four cheese mac and cheese was an utter delight. Pretty much everyone who had steak wished they were me since the beef was not so good and the pasta was oh-so-delicious. But during the course of conversation, someone said, "What's that cake that you get at Chili's that's part cake and part pudding and a whole lot of delicious?" And that man's wife and I said at the same time, "Volcano cake!" Well. Suffice it to say that I spent the day googling volcano cake, but found out that googling molten lava cake gave me better results. And here are the results.

This is a Martha Stewart recipe. Of which I mostly refuse to follow. It's a principle sort of thing. But it was the easiest and I had all the ingredients on hand and well - you didn't have to separate the eggs and whip egg whites and fold them in. Not a fan of whipping things. Well - just not food things. So here you go.

The recipe said you should cook them in six muffin tins and since I was giving them away, I decided to use my ramekins. I only had three small ones, so I made three baby cakes and two medium ones.

The "dough" got decidedly hard when I mixed the chocolate with the eggs, sugar and butter. I will make sure that those three ingredients are more than room temperature next time. It was almost too hard to plop in the ramekins.

The finished product with a sprinkle of powdered sugar.

And the carrying case! A drill box. Perfect!

Molten Lava Cake

4 T. butter

1/3 c. sugar

3 eggs

1/3 c. flour

8 oz. bittersweet chocolate, melted

Preheat oven to 400 degrees, spray ramekins to within an inch of their lives. Cream butter and sugar, add eggs one at a time, beating after each. Add flour. Then fold in the chocolate. Distribute between 6 small ramekins or muffin tins. Bake 8-10 minutes. The top may look sort of dry, but the middle should still be liquid. Remove from oven and cool 10 minutes. You can either invert them, or serve them individually in ramekins. They are very rich.