Saturday, June 30, 2012

Chocolate Lava Cake








This week on Masterchef we saw 'Ryan' the big villan get kicked off.  I'm sure the show edited Ryan to be twice the jerk then he actually is but I got bought into the story they were selling and was happy to see him go.  The pressure test that sent Ryan home packing was the 'Chocolate Lava Cake'.  A Chocolate Lava cake is basically an undercooked brownie.  Nice and chocolate cakey on the outside, warm chocolate pudding in the middle.


I did this for the first time at a friends place so it was kinda like a pressure test.  I never got a chance to rehearse so it better come out great or I'll look bad!





Ingredients
4 Large Eggs
4 Large egg yolks
2.5 sticks of butter
6 tbs of sugar
7 ounces of dark chocolate
6 tbs of flour
8 tsp of cocoa powder
a pinch of salt
1/4 tsp of vanilla







In a bowl prepare the 4 eggs and add the 4 egg yolks
Add the sugar.  I have a little assistant to help me this time!

Beat the egg and sugar mixture until it becomes pale yellow in colour.  
In another bowl, melt the chocolate and butter together.  You can use a double boiler to melt the chocolate and butter but I just stick it in the microwave at a low (defrost) setting.  Mix together until smooth.
Mix together the melted butter/chocolate with the eggs.  If the chocolate is really hot then you'll might need to temper it.  But in my case the microwave only heated the chocolate just enough to melt and it wasn't too hot so I just dump it in.
Mix.
 Sift in the flour and coca powder.
The sifting is to help prevent lumps in the batter. 
Fold it all together gently.  Don't overmix.
Ladle the batter into buttered ramekin
Clean the edges of the ramekins if any batter got spilled on it.  Tap the ramekins on a hard surface to knock out any air bubbles and then place on a cookie sheet.
Cook in a preheated oven at 425 F for 13 min.  
After letting it cool for 10 min run a knife around the edge.
Pop it out on a plate. 
Dust with icing sugar and serve!  I don't know if the picture shows it well, but you should be able to see the 'lava' ooze out.  Maybe if I cooked it for 1 less minute it would be a little bit more runny.
My friends found the lava cake to be pretty rich tasting.  One thing I figured out while looking at the recipe again is that I put in 8 tablespoons of coca powder when the recipe called for 8 teaspoons.  That might have made the chocolate flavour too intense.  I would definitely recommend serving it with vanilla ice cream to help cut the richness.

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