Molten Chocolate Cakes

Since Ryan usually makes me a cake for my birthday, I decided that I should bake something for his birthday this year. After looking at various recipes, I decided to try my hand at molten chocolate cakes.

This was the basic recipe I followed, but I made a few changes.

Ingredients

1 cup unsalted butter
8 ounces dark chocolate, cut into bite-size chunks
4 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar
Pinch of salt
4 teaspoons flour (or matzo meal, ground in a blender to a fine powder)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Garnish:
1 (6 ounce) container raspberries, barely moistened and rolled in about
1/2 cup sugar right before serving

Directions

1. Melt butter and chocolate in a medium heat-proof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water; remove from heat. Beat eggs, sugar and salt with a hand mixer (or whisk) in a medium bowl until sugar dissolves. Beat egg mixture and chocolate mixture together until smooth. Stir in vanilla extract. Beat in flour or matzo meal until just combined.

2. Adjust oven rack to middle position; heat oven to 450 degrees. Line a standard-size muffin tin (1/2 cup capacity) with 8 extra-large muffin papers (papers should extend above cups to facilitate removal). Spray muffin papers with vegetable cooking spray. OR use ramekins that have been oiled or sprayed with cooking spray. Divide batter equally among muffin cups or ramekins.

3. Bake until batter puffs but center is not set, 8 to 10 minutes. (When cracks begin to appear on the top, the cakes are done.)

Muffin cups: Carefully lift cakes from tin and set on a work surface. Pull papers away from cakes and transfer cakes to dessert plates.

Ramekins: Remove from oven. Let cool for a few minutes, then turn upside down onto dessert plates. It may help to run a knife around the edge before turning them upside down. Cakes can also be served in the ramekins.

4. Top each cake with sugared raspberries and serve immediately with vanilla ice cream.



Notes:

1. The original recipe calls for 5 eggs. Since I was just making cakes for Ryan and myself, I halved the recipe and used 2 eggs. They came out perfectly fine, so if you're doing the full recipe, I'm quite certain that 4 eggs will work.

2. Instead of rolling the raspberries in sugar right before serving, I tossed the berries in sugar before putting the ramekins in the oven so that they had time to macerate. When the cakes were done, I put the berries on top and drizzled the "syrup" over everything.