chocolate eruption

I'm not hugely crazy about chocolate. Sometimes I think this makes me insane. Most everyone else I know, especially women, are obsessed with chocolate and must have some everyday. For me, I definitely love a really great chocolate dessert, and I do have the occasional craving, but maybe 8 times out of 10, I'll choose a dessert that isn't chocolatey, and I don't think cheap chocolate is generally worth it. J-Cat is the same as me, we're big into the pies and tarts and pastries, not so much chocolate cake. So I guess that's why I haven't done a whole lot with chocolate in my time, and my double boiler often sits unnoticed in the cupboard. But for some reason the other day I had a desire to play with chocolate, so I went searching for a cake recipe. The one that caught my eye was this Chocolate Lava Cake at CacaoWeb. When I do have a chocolate dessert, I like it hot and moist, and oozing is definitely a plus. Sounds sooooo dirty...



The strange thing about my relative indifference to chocolate is that when I look at melted chocolate, I can't imagine anything being more luscious and delicious looking. That may be due to the humongous hunk of butter that you melt it with. This recipe called for either semi or bittersweet chocolate. I went for a 72% cacao chocolate, which is bittersweet, because for me, the darker the better. I used the Sunset Chocolate Pistoles by E. Guittard, which are wafer-shaped and thus easy to melt without having to hack up with a knife and make a huge mess.


This is an artisan single-origin chocolate, meaning the cocoa comes from one specific region of the world. This gives them a quality not unlike a wine from a single vineyard; there are distinctive notes to the flavor. Hey, if I'm going to mess around with chocolate, I want some good chocolate!

CHOCOLATE LAVA CAKE
Yield: 10 servings

INGREDIENTS
10 oz semi or bittersweet chocolate (preferably 70 % cocoa)
4/5 cup unsalted butter
8 eggs
1 1/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour

PREPARATION: 1. Preheat oven to 350 deg F.
2. Grease 10 large muffin tins or cups; paper muffin bake cups can also be used.
3. Break the chocolate into small pieces and melt it with butter over hot water.

4. Beat the eggs with sugar and mix with flour.
5. Slowly fold in the melted butter and chocolate.
6. Bake at 350 degrees for only 8-12 minutes; the outer part should be cooked and the inner part liquid.

The result was quite good, although the next time around I will probably reduce the sugar to 1 cup, as I still thought this was a tad too sweet. I was also clumsy with cooking times. My first pan baked a little too short, my second a little too long. Tonight I am going to try to bake the remainder of the first pan further, I wonder if that will not only firm a little bit more of the cake up, but will make it taste fresh and warm. I served these with fresh whipped cream and sliced strawberries.