Chocolate Lava Cake.. A Valentine's Day Indulgence

It is Valentine's Day, the season of love. I wanted to make it special for my valentine. My husband is a chocolate lover. Of late, he had been asking me to try at baking something with chocolate (Not that he is not fond of all my "healthy" baking, but a good, decadent chocolate cake takes him back to the days in his hometown Kannur and its famous bakeries). So, what better way to make my Valentine happy than bake him one!  I decided to go all out and make this wonderful mini cake which is full of, hold on, gooey chocolate oozing out!

And good news! My husband loved it. So much so that we both almost got drunk on chocolate, it was so deadly good! What makes this one for keeps is that it uses very few ingredients that we usually have in our fridge and bakes in no time! Here is the recipe, all you chocolate lovers.

This recipe adapted from ShowMeTheCurry (Hetal and Anuja)

Serves - 3 - 4
Preparation Time - 15 minutes
Baking Time - 13 - 18 minutes

Ingredients
4 Oz. (113 gms) of semi-sweet baking chocolate, cut into squares (I used Ghirardelli's)
1 Tbsps of Cocoa Powder
4 oz (113 gms, 1 stick, half cup or 8 tbsps) of butter, cut into cubes, room temperature
1/4 cup of all purpose flour
1/3 cup of granulated sugar
2 Tbsp of powdered sugar
2 large eggs
!/2 Tsp of Vanilla Essence

Note - The white bowls in the picture are ramekins. These are oven-safe bowls ideal for making lava cakes. Alternately, lava cakes can be made in muffin pans also. Then we would have to reduce the baking time.
 
Steps

• Pre-heat oven to 350 F (180 C)
• Grease the ramekins with some butter and line the bottom and sides with either some cocoa powder or powdered sugar

• On a double boiler, melt the chocolate and butter (A double boiler is made by placing a heatproof bowl such as a thick pyrex glass bowl or a steel/aluminium bowl over a saucepan containing boiling water, placed on medium-low heat; alternately this can be done in the microwave but we need to take care not to burn the chocolate)

•  In a large enough bowl, whisk together the granulated sugar and eggs until the batter turns fluffy and pale yellow. Now, mix in the vanilla essence
• Pour some of the melted chocolate-butter and stir (at first we only add a little to avoid cooking the eggs!)
• Now pour the rest of the melted chocolate-butter and mix the batter well
• Finally, add the flour and gently mix to combine everything
• Pour into your ramekins about 1/2 of the way up

• Bake for anywhere from 15 to 18 minutes, until the sides are done but the center still looks wet. If we want the center runny, then we need to take them out at about15 minutes.

Just out of the oven

Served with powdered sugar

 
Here are a few pics to show how they look taken out of the oven at different times-

Runny center; taken out at 15 minutes

A little less gooey center; taken out at 18 minutes

 

Serve this hot with a generous sprinkling of powdered sugar and a dollop of vanilla ice-cream. And enjoy the feeling of melting chocolate in your mouth