Tuesdays with Dorie: Gooey Chocolate Baby Cakes

This weekend, my friend April came to visit me!

How serendipitous that this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was the perfect thing to make for her visit!

Now, I’ve had Chocolate Molten cakes before at like Chili’s or Ruby Tuesday’s or somewhere equally as crappy. But it wasn’t something that I ever considered making myself. I mean… it seemed like the perfect “only when you go out to a restaurant” type of dessert. Ya know? Lord knows some things I should never attempt on my own. Particularly an easy and delicious recipe like this one!

The timing worked out perfectly, also… I knew that April was having dinner with her family and then would be at my place around 8:30/9:00pm. So, I started making these cakes at about 8:10. By 8:40ish, I was pulling these out of the oven and going downstairs to meet her.

By the time we got around to eating them… around 9:00, they weren’t hot, but they were lusciously oozy and gooey and delicious. Perfect with a glass of milk. I even had one the next morning and it was delicious then, too!



Later on in the weekend (after we had already eaten the all the cakes), I saw someone make little cakes like these on television and then I realized.... ohhhhhh.... right, you're supposed to turn the cakes over upside down to serve them! I forgot to do that. Oh well. I'm not a very good food stylist, apparently. I was too busy preparing to eat these suckers!

Soundtrack: Ummm.. well, I was flipping television channels between NCAA basketball and TLC’s What Not to Wear, sooo… no soundtrack this time.

Recipe Notes:
I halved the recipe and ended up with 4 baby-cakes that I made in a regular muffin pan.

I also used different ratios of chocolate (because I’m not a huge dark chocolate fan, although I knew that April was…) I used ½ bittersweet, 1/4 semi-sweet, and ¼ milk chocolate.

This is April... modeling a piece...

Thanks Leigh aka Lemon Tartlet ! This was a great choice!

Gooey Chocolate Cake
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
¼ teaspoon salt
5 ounces bittersweet chocolate,
4 ounces coarsely chopped,
1 ounce very finely chopped
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 large egg yolk, at room temperature
6 tablespoons of sugar

Getting ready: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. butter (or spray – it’s easier) 6 cups of a regular-size muffin pan, preferably a disposable aluminum foil pan, dust the insides with flour and tap out the excess. Put the muffin pan on a baking sheet.

Sift the flour, cocoa and salt together.

Set a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of gently simmering water, put the coarsely chopped chocolate and the butter in the bowl and stir occasionally over the simmering water just until they are melted – you don’t want them to get so hot that the butter separates. Remove the bowl from the pan of water.

In a large bowl, whisk the eggs and yolk until homogenous. Add the sugar and whisk until well blended, about 2 minutes. Add the dry ingredients and, still using the whisk, stir (don’t beat) them into the eggs. Little by little, and using a light hand, stir in the melted chocolate and butter. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups and sprinkle the finely chopped chocolate over the batter.

Bake the cakes for 13 minutes. Transfer them, still on the baking sheet, to a rack to cool for 3 minutes. (There is no way to test that these cakes are properly baked, because the inside remains liquid.)

Line a cutting board with a silicone baking mat or parchment or wax paper, and, after the 3-minute rest, unmold the cakes onto the board. Use a wide metal spatula to lift the cakes onto dessert plates.