Molten Chocolate Cakes

How to impress your dinner guests.

I was surfing the web one fine afternoon and I tripped across a short bit about the "Big Mac of desserts" the molten chocolate cake.  Now this hooked me because I have only had one molten chocolate cake at a restaurant and Big Mac implies ubiquity.  It turns out that the title referred to the fact that this particular chef has served so many of these that they are like his Big Mac.

(I had forgotten how annoying the host was.  I guess that's why I didn't watch any more of those videos.)

The recipe seemed so easy that I quickly wrote it down and tried it that night.  Awesome!  I will talk about the ways to bollocks this up at the end, but here's the rundown...

This is all that is in the batter.

You'll need:

• 5oz semi sweet chocolate (use 4oz if you don't want it rich)
• 1 (4oz) stick of unsalted butter
• 2 eggs plus 2 yolks
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 tsp flour
• butter and flour for ramekins
• vanilla ice cream

Preheat the oven to 450F

Butter and flour 4 4oz ramekins. I bought some tortilla molds on Amazon. Before use I filled them with 4oz of water to see how high to fill them with batter.  I have also used glass ramekins that I bought at the grocery store. (Add a minute to the cook time if you use glass)

Melt the choc and butter in a double boiler.  I use a glass bowl over a sauce pan, you could use the microwave if you want.  You are kinda making a ganache.

Beat together the eggs, yolks and sugar until you have a light colored mixture with no granularity.  You will need to beat like hell.

Mix a bit of the choc mixture into the egg to temper.

Add 2tsp flour and the rest of the choc and fold/stir in.

Distribute the batter into the ramekins and cook 6-8 minutes.  6 minutes for totally gooey, 8 for nearly no molten bit and 7 for just right.

Take the cakes out of the oven and let sit for a minute or two.

You can see where they are uncooked in the center.

Invert onto the plate by bringing the plate up to the ramekin and turning them over together.  Ploping these down is sure to break some of them.

Ramekins might be hot...

Plate on top...

One smooth motion.

Serve with vanilla ice cream.

If, like me, your buttering/flouring skills lead to a less than optimum outer surface of the cake you could dust on a little powdered sugar.  However, let's try to avoid the adult onset diabetes, shall we?


What can go wrong?  A couple of things.  You could scramble the eggs when you add the molten ganache.  You could have the cakes stick because you didn't butter/flour enough.  You could burn your fingers because you used glass ramekins and they retained the heat too well.  None of these is worth worrying about.  Cover all mistakes with vanilla ice cream and eat.