Chocolate Girl’s Favorite!
There are many recipes for the warm (sometimes known as molten) chocolate cake — the one where your cake is served warm and, if cooked perfectly, the center will be slightly under-baked and similar to chocolate sauce …or lava!
This version is one of the easiest and will guarantee happy quests! You can vary it by using different chocolates including orange or coffee flavored dark chocolates. And another great feature of this recipe is that you can make it ahead of time — up to a week! — and bake when wanted.
Use any of the following dark chocolates to make this recipe:
Guanaja 70% from Valrhona — the extraordinary bitterness of this classic French chocolate makes an exquisite warm chocolate cake.
811 54.5% Callebaut — a good balanced flavor for semi-sweet chocolate lovers..
El Rey Gran Saman 70%— this bitter chocolate has an earthy note from the Venezuelan cacao beans.
Free Shipping on all orders for these items through April! Enter code: Recipe
Makes 8 servings
8 Tablespoons Butter (unsalted)
8 oz. Dark Chocolate*
4 Large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup sugar
2 Tablespoons All-Purpose Flour
* Which chocolate you use is entirely subjective – meaning you can use whichever chocolate you have on hand! Most often chefs use a dark chocolate and we feel the darker the better! Anything above 50% works great but the 70% chocolates make an intensely rich, chocolaty cake. See our recomendations above and take advantage of our coupon.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Grease 8 ramekins. Place on shallow roasting pan or cookie sheet.
- Melt butter and chocolate in microwave. Stir until smooth (at ½ power and check every 15 seconds). Watch this melting chocolate video.
- Beat eggs, vanilla, salt and sugar at highest speed with hand (or stand) mixer until volume triples (about 5 minutes). Batter should drop in thick stream and be the color of butter.
- Add the chocolate and butter mixture to the eggs, sprinkle sifted flour over egg mixture and gently fold egg and flour into chocolate until mixture is uniform in color. This may take a few minutes as the mixture gradually becomes a dark brown.
- Pour mixture into ramekins. At this stage, batter can be set aside and baked later that same day or stored in the fridge for up to a week. Let batter warm to room temperature before baking or cook a few minutes longer if batter is cold.
- Bake until cakes have puffed above rims of ramekins, with a thin crust on top, and cakes jiggle at center when gently shaken (10 – 13 minutes). Loosen sides and invert, cool for 1 minute and remove ramekin and serve with your choice of ice cream or whipped cream! We prefer vanilla or coffee ice cream or gelato.
