How to Make Incredible Molten Chocolate Cake at Home

Sorry for the delay in posts but I’m on vacation with my family at the Jersey shore. I’m trying to find time to write about some of the delicious meals we are having but between the beach, meals and taking the kids to different night entertainment, I’m not finding time to get much writing done.

Here’s the receipe for the Molten Chocolate Cake that I promised to post in my Humbled But What a Great Night of Cooking blog. If you didn’t read it, this recipe came from a cooking class my wife and I attended at a great BYOB restaurant called Blackfish. Not only did we have a fun night of cooking and a great meal, I learned a lot from Chef Jeff Power and Chef Ashley Hess.

Molten Chocolate Cake
Makes 20 cakes

Important Tip –I learned from Chef Jeff while preparing this recipe it is critical to not to get any water in the melted chocolate. He made it clear that even a drop of water would ruin the chocolate.

Ingredients

1 lb. chocolate (we used those chocolate chips you buy for cookies)
1 lb. butter
5 oz sugar
4 oz sifted flour
10 eggs
10 egg yolks
20 aluminum tins (butter & floured)*
Powdered sugar for dusting at the end

 * The tins were 4 oz disposable aluminum cups that you might use for muffins or souffles. The dimensions are about 3 - 1/8 inch across the top, 2.25 inch across the bottom and about 1.5 inch deep.

How to Prepare Molten Chocolate Cakes

Set up a double boiler by putting a large stainless steel mixing
bowl over a pot of simmering water. You can buy a double boiler,
but it is just as easy to set one up using the pans you already own.
Just make sure that no water can splash up and get into the chocolate.
(You can see examples of double boilers or double boiler inserts at
Cookware  under double boilers)

Melt the butter and chocolate in the double boiler using a spatula
to keep the chocolate from burning while you are combining the
two ingredients.   You want the consistency at the end to be silky. 

While the chocolate is melting, whip the sugar, eggs and egg yolks
together in a kitchen aid mixer until it triples in volume. For us, it was
when the mixture reached the top and was just about to overflow
the mixing bowl. I guess you can eyeball what three times the volume
would look like if you were cutting this recipe in half.

If you don’t have kitchen aid mixer, try using an electric hand mixer
but it is going to make the next steps harder without having your hands
free. So this is a great recipe to make with your spouse or even your
kids.

Once the eggs and sugar reach triple volume, slowly fold in the melted
chocolate using the spatula to scrape any chocolate sticking to the
sides. On the kitchen aid mixer we were using, I had it running at
almost full speed while the eggs and sugar were mixing but turned it
down to 2 when I folded in the chocolate.

With the mixer still running at a slower speed, fold in the sifted flour
into the chocolate and egg mixture and immediately stop the machine.
Lower and remove the mixing bowl, remove the mixing whisk and stir
the mixture by hand to make sure to scrape along the sides to be sure
everything is well combined. Be careful not to over mix at this point.

Pour the mixture into the buttered and floured tins and bake at 350
degrees for 5 minutes.

When done, remove from oven and gently remove the cakes from
the tins by turning them over and gently taping the sides and bottom
of the tins onto the serving plate. Sprinkle a little powdered sugar
over the top and serve.

We didn’t cook them right away so Chef Jeff covered and put them
into the freezer until about 10 minutes before we were going to bake
them. If you hold them for any length of time, you may want to
remove them 30 minutes before baking.