Chocolate Lava Cake

Happy Saturday! 🙂 As we all know Valentines Day was recently. Now, we(Fiancé and I) don’t really do much for Valentines day, just a sweet card to each other usually. BUT I did take the day this year as an excuse to make and extra special meal for me and my fiancé- AND I actually make dessert which is something that I never do. It was relatively easy, and tasted really decadent. Here it is!

Ingredients:
5 tablespoons (plus more for greasing ramekins) butter
1 cup dark chocolate chips
2 egg yolks
2 cage-free eggs
3 tablespoons sugar
1 heaping tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
4 tablespoons A.P. flour
pinch of salt
1/4 teaspoon of vanilla
raspberries for garnish (optional)
vanilla ice cream(optional)

Directions:
1. Pre-heat oven to 425. Grease ramekins well with butter and coat with a layer of sugar. (This trick works wonders and those babies will slide right out!)

2. Melt the butter and chocolate together in a medium sized bowl either in the microwave (make sure to only this is on 50% power and in 30 second increments so that you don’t burn it!!) or double boiler method.

3. In a large bowl whisk together the egg yolks, eggs, and sugar until frothy.

4. Then stir in the melted chocolate mixture into the egg and sugar mixture and whisk ,just until combined. Set aside.

5. In a small bowl combine cocoa powder, flour, and salt. Then sift into the chocolate mixture and whisk until combined.

6. Stir in the vanilla.

7. Pour the mixture evenly into the ramekins, you can use 5 oz ramekins to make 4 servings or use 8 oz ones to make 2 servings. Tap them lightly on the counter to remove air bubbles.

8. Refrigerate them for about 30 minutes.

9. Place the ramekins in the casserole dish and carefully pour hot water (can be hot just from the faucet or boiled) into the casserole dish until it goes half way up the side of the ramekins.(Careful not to get them IN the ramekins… not that that happened or anything… 🙂 )

10. Bake for about 18-22 minutes.(Ok the recipe I read said that you’d know they were done when the middle still looked a little jiggly but the rim was firm- I didn’t find that to be true(see pic below)- my whole top looked and felt completely cooked, but the underside and middle was still gooey. I think you may just have to trial and error the time with your oven….) When they’re done, remove ramekins from the casserole dish and let them cool for about 5 minutes. Turn it upside down over a plate and tap the bottom firmly until the cake slides out. This should happen easily with your coating of sugar, but if it doesn’t just slide a knife around the edge to loosen things up.

11. Garnish with fruit and or ice cream and any other topping you’d like. Enjoy!

This was amazing. I couldn’t finish mine. I’m not a huge chocolate person(don’t hate me) and I used 8 oz ramekins which is actually a pretty big serving. Jake however had no issues finishing his. He was very impressed 🙂 Kept asking what it was, I kept answering Chocolate Lava Cake but he kept wanting more details. He was like ” no but it’s all gooey and perfect. I mean this is like so good, you could charge $10 for this at a restaurant and it would sell out”….awwww what a good fiancé 🙂

Hope you all enjoy!

xoxo