There are a million recipes out there for Molten Lava Cakes. I’ve tried tons of different ones and honestly I’ve never had a bad one. I mean, how can anything that looks like this not be good?! This particular recipe I got from my beautiful, intelligent, and outrageously talented sister-in-law Emily. (You know, since this week we’re sucking up to our in-laws and I can’t let Kate upstage me.) Can you believe I actually have THREE sister-in-laws named Emily?? For the record they are all beautiful, intelligent, and outrageously talented 🙂 This particular one happens to be married to my brother Nate and I love her.
I used to make mini chocolate souffles a lot, but these are so much easier and they turn out every time so I’ve bagged teh souffles. Seriously, you can whip these suckers up in less than 5 minutes and be eating them shortly after that. So easy, so impressive, and so so good.
And since I know at least one person will ask- yes you need to use bittersweet chocolate! Remember you’re adding sugar too and these are very rich as is. Adding a sweet chocolate like milk or semi will be a little overkill. Besides bittersweet chocolate is my favorite! Live on the wild side.
Individual Molten Lava Cakes
4 T real butter
1/3 C sugar
3 large eggs
1/3 C flour
1/4 t salt
8 oz bittersweet chocolate*, melted
*8 ounces is about 1 1/3 C of bittersweet chocolate chips. Make the 1/3 cup a little over-full and you should be good
Additional Ingredients:
powdered sugar for dusting
sweetened whipped cream for serving
butter and sugar for preparing pans
You can either bake these in a muffin pan, in ramekins, or even oven-proof
mugs. If you use a muffin tin you’ll get 6 cakes and depending on the size of the ramekins you’ll get 4-6.
Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. To prepare pans, use your fingers (or the butter wrapper) to rub butter in the muffin tins or ramekins. Sprinkle in some granulated sugar to coat the entire inner surface and tap out any extra discard.
In a bowl with a mixer beat the 4 T butter and 1/3 C sugar until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Combine flour and salt and slowly add it into the butter mixture just until combined. Stir in melted chocolate by hand, just until combined. Don’t over mix.
Divide batter evenly among prepared muffin cups or ramekins and then place them on a baking sheet. (If using ramekins you’ll want them not quite 3/4 full)
The cute heart-shaped ramekins I used are from Michael’s craft Store. They come in pink, white, and red and they’re $1 each. When I was in the store the other day I heard them calling out, “Saaaaara, buuuuuy us, buuuuy us…” and who am I to argue with talking ramekins??
Mmmm….gooey chocolate. Don’t you wish you could stick your finger in that?
Bake just until tops of cakes no longer jiggle when pan is lightly shaken, about 8-10 min for a muffin pan, and 10-12 for ramekins. Remove from oven and let stand 10 min.
You can serve them one of two ways. Obviously if you’re using a muffin pan you’ll need to invert the cakes and place them on serving plates. They should pop right out after you run a sharp knife around the edge. Since I had these darling pink heart dishes I served mine
right in the dish. You’re the cook, do what you want! Dust with powdered sugar and serve with a dallop of sweetened whipped cream.
Okay, the hearts look pretty cute inverted too.
Now here’s why they’re called Molten Lava Cakes. They cook beautifully on the outside- kind of a mixture between a brownie and a souffle. But then when you bust that sucker open you get a gooey, flowing, chocolate, lava-like surprise.
I love breaking through that first layer and seeing the oozing center. Gets me excited every time, like I don’t know it’s there!
This picture does a good job of showing the different textures. A tiny bit of crisp on the very top, then a soft, chewy layer, then the molten sauce in the center.
These little babies are rich, so definitely have some whipped cream, or some ice cream to go with it. Definitely a Valentine-Worthy dessert!
Questions & Reviews
Oh wow, those look amazing!!
And, my sister and I are obviously related since I came to comment specifically on the “print text only” feature. Ditto what she said. I love your pictures but they just don’t translate as well onto a black and white print out. Thanks!
We just added that, nice eh? A huge thanks to 2 people. Kevin from Closet Cooking told me about that easy way to do the text only printing, and the fabulous Tae helped us work out a bunch of printing bugs we were not smart enough to figure out on our own! She added the “print this page” link at the bottom of the post, and that will print out the post in it’s entirety without all of the sidebar stuff. And it doesn’t cut-off anymore! Thanks Tae!
These look soooooo good. The chocoholic DH will love it!! The dude puts chocolate ice cream in his root beer floats and I think he’s a freak for it. But I love himi anyway.
Oh my gosh! When did you add “Print recipe text only” button! I’ve been meaning to ask you if you could add it! Thank you so much, it sure makes it a lot easier and we don’t have to use a bajillion sheets of paper to print out the recipe!
And oh yeah, this recipe looks amazing.
This is probably the seventh time I’ve been craving something, and searching for recipes, when it miraculously ends up on your site the next day 🙂 Looks delicious! Mmm mmm!
Now that’s what I’m talking about! This will go in the book on my counter of recipes I make WEEKLY!
What a perfect dessert!
I just bought a bunch of those cute little heart shaped ramekins at Michael’s last week. Wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them but they were so cute I just had to have them – now I know what I’ll do with them!
I love love molten lava cake. Our Chili’s use to have it and that was the only reason I went there but it has closed down but now I can make it at home – thanks!
Yum! I was going to use a different recipe for v-day, but I think I might use this one.
These look so good. I am wishing I had one right now!