Chocolate Lava Cakes

The first ever lava cake I had was in the thick of winter, two years ago, from a delivery menu. My cousin had ordered it for all of us, and although I wasn't sure it was going to be any good (because of some TVC's really), but it came highly recommended. And anyway, I have no idea why I had any reservations about a dessert that came in hot, with a molten chocolate centre.

After that, nothing. Until about two months ago, when at a restaurant I had some smaller versions that they called chocolate bombe which is almost the same thing, except they topped a serving with a lot of vanilla icecream - taking my interest (in this dessert) to an entirely different level.


The cake is known by different names, and it took me some time to realise it's all the same thing. It's either chocolate lava cake, chocolate fondants or molten chocolate cakes.  It's not that I did not have a good recipe to try out. I had one for Chocolate pecan fondants, molten chocolate cake, so on and so forth.  But most recipes I had for chocolate fondants had egg yolks and whole eggs and I wasn't too keen on those - storing egg whites get's tricky sometimes (only for me - maybe because I am lazy?).

It was during my search for a good lava cake, with full eggs, that I found these - Molten Chocolate Babycakes - by way of Ms Lawson's site (Yes, yes, Nigella Lawson. All those reading this, you have to see the website - even if you don't have time to cook, just read).

The recipe seemed too large to make - I didn't have that many people to serve this to straight out of the oven -  and I didn't think these will travel to well. So I (oh, as usual) halved the recipe and reduced the sugar because my chocolate already had some sugar. Even then, the cakes bordered on some extra sweetness, but ocassionaly that works.

Chocolate lava cakes
Based on the recipe Molten Chocolate Babycakes by Nigella Lawson

Makes 4

You need -

•175g dark chocolate (semi sweet)
•25g soft unsalted butter
•40g caster sugar
•2 large eggs, beaten with a pinch of salt
•1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
•25g plain flour
•4 individual pudding moulds (I used aluminium ramekins of about 150ml volume), a large square butter paper (12 inch by 12 inch should work)

To make -

1.Preheat the oven to 200ºC. Take 1 of the moulds, fold a large square of butter paper into half  and then half again on a sheet of doubled baking parchment, and place the mould on top. Draw round the mould, remove, and then cut out the discs as marked. Grease individual discs and press them all into the base of the tins.

2.Melt the chocolate and let it cool slightly. In another bowl, cream together the butter and sugar for about 3 minutes with a whisk and then gradually beat in the eggs and salt, then the vanilla. Sift in the flour, and when all is smoothly combined scrape in the cooled chocolate, mixing it into a smooth batter.

3.Divide the batter between the 4 moulds,  and arrange them on a baking tray and place the tray in the oven. At this stage you can refrigerate the moulds as is for upto 48 hours, and cook the cakes when you want to eat them  because they need to be hot when served.

 4.Cook for 12 minutes and as soon as you take them out of the oven, tip out these cakes onto small plates or in shallow bowls.

 5.Serve these with whipped cream or ice cream or custard because individually they are quite rich, but they taste just as good, if served plain.