How to Make Molten Chocolate Lava Cakes

See also "A Baker's Guide to Molten Lava Chocolate Cakes."

Molten Chocolate Lava Cakes are exquisite, indulgent, and maybe decadent. There's no better fix for your chocolate cravings than lava cakes.  

There are two ways to make lava cakes. In the first, you put half the batter in your ramekins or in the cavities of your muffin pan. Put pure chocolate wafers on top of the batter, and then cover the wafers with the rest of the batter. In baking, the chocolate melts. If you serve the little cakes warm, the chocolate spills out, as designed.

Wafers are what bakers and candy makers use for a candy coating. It is the best sweet chocolate, much better than chocolate chips. Wafers have a finer, smoother grind than chocolate chips.  Chocolate chips are intended for chocolate chip cookies. Covered with flour, which is course, chips don't need to be of a fine grind.

If you want the very best chocolate lava cakes, use wafers.

Most lava cake recipes do not call for wafers. The fine chocolate of wafers cost more and most home bakers do not have chocolate wafers on hand. 

Instead of wafers, most recipes depend on batter. The cakes are not baked all the way through. The intent is to bake thee cakes just long enough that the outer shell is bake but interior of the cakes are still runny. If baked just enough, the uncooked batter spills out when cut open. But the cakes have to baked just right. If baked too much, there is no lava, and if not baked enough, the dessert is more like pudding so there is not much room for error.  

And if the recipe calls for eggs, you're serving uncooked eggs in the batter.

Molten Chocolate Lava Cake Mix

Our mix contains chocolate wafers. It's more expensive than a batter-based mix but wafers make the best lava cakes.

See our Molten Chocolate Cake Mix. It makes 6 lava cakes. Instead of making the lava cakes in a muffin pan, you can bake them in ramekins.

If you love chocolate cake and hot fudge, then you can never go wrong with this molten chocolate lava cake mix. Surprise your family, a loved one, or just spend a night in with these scrumptious lava cake.

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter
• 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 6 large eggs
• 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup rich dark cocoa, Ramstadt Rich Dark Cocoa or equal

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Generously butter a standard muffin tin. Dust with granulated sugar, and tap out excess. Set aside.

1. In the bowl of your stand-type mixer and with the paddle attachment, cream the one cup butter, one cup sugar, and salt together. Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each.
2. Add the flour and cocoa and beat until just combined. Divide the batter evenly among prepared muffin cups.
3. Bake just until the tops of the cakes no longer jiggle when the pan is slightly shaken, 8 to 9 minutes. Remove from oven and let the pan stand for three minutes.
4. To remove the cakes, place a cutting board over the top of the pan with the cakes. Grasping the edges of the pan and cutting board together, invert the pan, hold the inverted pan atop the cutting board, and drop the pan and cutting board from a height of six to eight inches. The cakes will pop loose onto the cutting board.
5. Dust with confectioners’ sugar, and serve with ice cream or whipped cream.

Baker's note: Let the cakes cool for a couple of minutes and then gently loosen them from the pan with a soft silicone spatula. During baking, sugar turns to a liquid. If you let the sugar cool and set, it is very difficult to remove the cakes from the pan.

Get your cocoa here:

• Ramstadt Rich Dark Cocoa
• Ramstadt Medium Dark Cocoa
• Belcolade Real Dark Cocoa

We recommend these chocolate wafers.

• Dark Chocolate Wafers, Reg.
• Dark Chocolate Wafers, Large
• White Chocolate Wafers