If you’ve perused the dessert menu after an American-Italian meal, or found yourself exploring the gourmet bakery for a new dessert, you may have stumbled across the Chocolate Lava Cake.
This innocent-looking dome is a decadent treat that can easily take care of a chocolate craving on any given day. Ordering this at a restaurant often leads to some degree of a chocolate coma, a rich and moist cake filled with warm chocolate fudge that oozes out of the center upon that first bite. If it’s served with ice cream and raspberry sauce, you’re just a few steps from heaven.
Restaurants around the world pride themselves on the perfect chocolate lava cake, and it’s often found on menus in a variation of its official title – ‘Chocolate Explosion’, ‘Chocolate Bomb’, and ‘Molten Chocolate Cake’ – are just a few creative descriptions for this treat. Still, the basic recipe stays the same, and if you find yourself desperate for this dessert and there’s no restaurant in sight, there is hope – you can make the perfect chocolate lava cake in your very own kitchen.
The chocolate lava cake is actually quite simple in construction, and only requires some assembly before baking. Before you attempt to inject your cake with chocolate, be forewarned that the process of filling those domes is much easier than it looks. Here’s the mystery revealed:
Chocolate Lava Cake Secret: The Domes
Use a regular chocolate cake mix. You may gasp with astonishment about this simple strategy, but it really will give you the rich and moist cake you need for the structure of the cake. The best choice? Duncan Hines Dark Chocolate cake mix, an oh-so-simple guilty pleasure.
Chocolate Lava Cake Secret: The Filling
Some recipes call for chocolate pudding, hot fudge sauce, or even melted chocolate embedded in the middle, but none of these will give you that rich and oozing texture found at the restaurants. The real secret? Condensed milk mixed with melted unsweetened chocolate chips and a few caramels. Just mix together ¼ cup unsweetened chocolate chips, 3-5 caramels, and 1 can of condensed milk in a double boiler to make a smooth sauce.
Chocolate Lava Cake Secret: Assembly
When you’re assembling the cake, you’ll want to fill ramekin cups – not large muffin cups as some recipes suggests – 2/3 of the way full of cake batter, add 2 tablespoons of filling, and then top off the rest of the ramekin with more cake batter. Remember that you’ll be inverting the cake when it’s baked, so the filling needs to stay as near the bottom as possible.
Chocolate Lava Cake Secret: Serving the Cake
The secret to making sure the chocolate lava cake actually oozes when you serve it is to keep it warm right after baking. However, this doesn’t mean you should leave it in a warm oven since this will overbake the cakes. All you need to do is leave the cakes in the ramekins and cover them with saran wrap or foil to trap in the moisture. This should keep them warm and soft for at least 3-4 hours after baking. After that, invert the cakes onto a platter and microwave for 45-60 seconds until warm throughout.
And that’s it! The secret to the perfect chocolate lava cake is now yours; your chocolate cravings are no longer at the mercy of the local restaurant or bakery.
