The incredible molten chocolate lava cake that is! When I first saw this dreamy thing, couple of years back, I used to think, this is not any difficult at all. If you could fill up your cup half with batter, add in some chopped chocolate and cover it up with the same batter, bake and that’s it. So to me, the thing flowing out was melted chocolate. How old fashioned I would have been ? :O

Later then one fine day I learnt about it, it is just one batter and when you bake and scoop it through, the lava flows out. It just blew my mind off!!

How is that even possible. And so did this one, enter into my most sought after bakes that was difficult to be nailed.

So very recently when I was going through, after taking some courage on really baking them finally, I was so surprised to realize it was such an easy thing to whip up and bake off. Very simple ingredients, just use hands and whisk to finally finish up the whole thing. I was flying literally when I saw the lava flow out. How nice it is to discover the child in us, so many times, over and over again. If baking was not there, then we all would have been adults, all the time. Wont you agree ?!

You would want to try this right away isn’t it ?

1. Generously butter custard pans / silicon muffin cups. Place them over your baking tray.

2. Add butter and chopped chocolate into a microwave safe bowl. Microwave on high power for 50 seconds and stir until butter and chocolate melts without any lumps. You can also use a double boiler for the same.

3. Let cool to room temperature.

4. Add the eggs and the yolks into a separate bowl.

5. Whisk them to break up and combine well. Add icing sugar to the eggs mixture and whisk well again until pale yellow.

6. Add vanilla and beat again. ( that teeny tiny bit in the left bottom corner that is beautifully sinking inside is the madagascar vanilla bean paste I use in most of my bakes )

7. Add the chocolate-butter mixture into the eggs-sugar mixture and whisk well until combined well.

8. Add the flour finally and whisk just until combined.

9. Refrigerate for 10 minutes, while you pre-heat your oven to 200 degree C.

10. Pour the batter into the prepared pans. Bake in pre-heated oven at 200 degree C for 9 to 10 minutes. The sides of the cake would be set well, while the center will still be wobbly and soft to the touch. That is how it is supposed to be. Do not be tempted to bake for longer thinking it has not baked well. Else you will loose your lava.

11. Cool on wire rack just until you are able to bear the heat to pick up the cups. But keep it still warm to serve. They will look risen once out of the oven, and they might settle down flat, which is normal.

Run a knife through the sides of the cake and unmould the cups into your serving plate. Dust some icing sugar on top. Serve them hot/warm. Do not cool it down completely or you might not see the lava magic oozing out. If in case you got left overs, you can store them refrigerated. Serve them back again after few seconds of microwaving, but it would definitely not have the lava inside. It would have gone into the pudding mode.

So the apt way of doing these would be, to whip up the batter and refrigerate and then to collect your guests to whom you want to serve these with, put it into the oven to bake for 10 minutes, meanwhile you keep your guests occupied with something else and then just shoot them with these served nice and hot. Let them scoop the beautiful shots down to get mesmerized from the oozing chocolaty yumm from the center together with the crunchy and softy outside counterpart.

This is definitely something that was created in heaven. And we get to experience this is so divine and blissful