Molten Chocolate Cake with Caramel sauce

When it comes to cakes and breads, I never post a recipe unless I have tried it at least twice successfully. And when it came to Molten Lava cake, I have never been fully satisfied with the results until now! Over the past 1 year I have tried 3 different recipes and finally this 4 th time I felt like yay! that’s some lava!

Even though I had tried only 3 recipes for molten lava cakes before this, I have looked at several – quite possibly hundreds of recipes!. And looking at all those recipes one thing was clear. There are 2 different techniques when it comes to baking a molten lava cake. One school’s technique is simple yet ingenious  – bake the cakes first, cut out the inner portions, fill with fudge sauce and then freeze them. When ready to serve, stick them in the microwave and voila you have lava oozing out of these cakes! Definitely fool proof albeit slightly laborious recipe.

The 2nd technique is an easier recipe than the first that uses chocolate bars,eggs,egg yolks and very little flour to bake the cake.  The batter can be made and stored ahead of time up to 12 hours ahead. Then bake the cakes just before serving. One catch – you need to time the baking properly. If you go even 1 minute over, then there won’t be any magic – no lava( alas!) although the cake will still taste awesome.!

The 3 recipes that I tried before – all used the 2nd technique. The main reason I have hesitated trying the first technique recipe is because of the potential waste of cake – what will I do with the cut outs from each cake? I don’t like wasting any food and so have never tried following that recipe. All the past 3 attempts of my lava cake were also good although not 100% successful – mainly I couldn’t get enough of the gooey lava to come out of each cake. That now I understand is dependent upon 2 things mainly – the composition of your cake batter (the less flour the better) and the time you bake it. Simply put, you need to get the bake time right whatever recipe you use!

This time’s successful attempt is based on a combination of two different recipes – You see I didn’t have chocolate chips that one recipe called for so had to improvise 🙂 I used chocolate bars instead and I had noticed that most recipes used combination of eggs and egg yolks for extra gooeyness so I decided to add an egg yolk too. I was ecstatic when it worked! Call it pure magic or pure science I don’t know which one it was – but the lava flowed! I also made a quick caramel sauce to pour over it for added effects and for doubling the oozy gooey deliciousness of the cake 🙂 Just molten ‘lava-ing’ good! 🙂

Btw, if you are as obsessed with molten lava cakes as I am, check this article by Lucky Peach about their history – indeed a delightful read! 🙂

I am bringing this Molten creation to Fiesta Friday this week.

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