Chocolate Lava Cake

If you're looking for a delicious, quick and easy dessert to make for your friends and family, here's one of my absolute favorites:

Chocolate Lava Cake

4 Baker's Semi Sweet Chocolate Squares
1/2 stick butter
1 cup powdered sugar
2 eggs
2 egg yolks
6 Tbsp flour

PREHEAT oven to 425°F. Butter four 3/4-cup custard cups or soufflé dishes. Place on baking sheet.

MICROWAVE chocolate and butter in large microwaveable bowl on HIGH 1 min. or until butter is melted. Stir with wire whisk until chocolate is completely melted. Stir in sugar until well blended. Blend in eggs and egg yolks with wire whisk. Stir in flour. Divide batter among prepared custard cups.
BAKE 13 to 14 min. or until sides are firm but centers are soft. Let stand 1 min. Carefully run small knife around cakes to loosen. Invert cakes onto dessert dishes. Serve immediately.

This can serve 4-8 people, depending on the hunger level, and if you're serving it with ice cream or not.  It's a very filling dessert!

If you want to make this ahead of time, just prepare the mixture and add it to the buttered custard cups.  Then cover it with plastic wrap and refrigerate it.  When you're ready to bake the cake, let the cups sit out for a half hour before you put them in the oven.
Also, this recipe turns out best when you put the cakes in the middle rack and don't open the oven to check them until the 13 minutes is up.

Happy baking and good luck!!

Chocolate Death Cake

I was so excited to post pictures of this awesome chocolate cake I made for Kyle as a celebration of his diphtheria-like illness subsiding, but for some reason, every time I post a picture lately, the link breaks and I just can't seem to figure out how to fix it.  Talk about frustrating!  So anyway, if you don't see pictures of a sinful-looking chocolate cake below, that's why.

Oh well.  At least these picture problems are lighting a fire under Ky's butt to get my website started. Yay!  Caracakes.com will soon be a happy reality with lots of pictures that you can actually see, recipes to try, and more cooking and baking adventures!

Anyway, I feel that it's my duty to at least describe the yummy cake to you.  It was a chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream icing and chocolate shavings on the sides.  The cake was moist and chocolately, but not overly sweet.  The cake was a lot less dense than the typical chocolate cake, which I think may have been attributed to my only using egg whites insead of the entire egg.  The chocolate icing was that perfect mixture of thick, sweet, rich, buttery goodness, with just a touch of airiness.  70% cocoa shavings really helped elevate the cake from being a simple chocolate cake to a really decadent dessert.  Kyle refers to it as Chocolate Death Cake because it's so good that he couldn't stop eating it, and well, now he feels like death.  Guess that's what happens when you eat half a cake!

Friday I'll be sharing my most favorite chocolate lava cake recipe that's super easy, super quick, and of course absolutely delicious!

Hope everyone's having a happy hump day!