Okay, so it’s my girlfriend’s birthday on Saturday and I want to bake her a cake. Her favorite cake is a liquid center chocolate cake, and I’ve found some recipes online but I have no idea which would be the best. After trying other recipes out on the recipe threads, I’ve come to trust the tastes of the Dopers, so I’m asking for some recipes that you’ve tried and liked. Tips on presentation, what brand of chocolate, and especially any hints to make it easier are all appreciated too. I’m not that experienced of a cook, but I can follow instructions fairly well, so it doesn’t have to be too simple.
Are you talking about the individual ones that you bake in little ramekins? If so, I have a recipe somewhere that I clipped from the paper, if I can find it. Be forewarned: this stuff can clog your arteries at 100 paces. And it’s highly addictive. I made them once for my mom’s birthday, with a nice raspberry sauce - she had sworn she didn’t want cake (yeah, right!) but somehow it disappeared.
From the Chicago Sun-Times, Valentine’s Day special food section, 2000:
Bittersweet warm chocolate cake: makes 9 servings
7 oz. (1-3/4 stick) unsalted butter
1-1/4 cups bittersweet chocolate, chopped
4 egg yolks
4 whole eggs
1-3/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons confectioner’s sugar
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sifted cake flour, measured after sifting
- Melt the butter and chocolate in a bowl placed over hot water. [My note: you can do this in a microwave if you are careful and stir often.]
- In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs and egg yolks over hot water until warm. Using the whisk attachment of the mixer, slowly mix the confectionaers’sugar into the melted chocolate until smooth. Gradually add the warm egg to the chocolate mixture, and mix until smooth.
- Add the sifted flour all at once and mix until well combined. Butter and flour 3 four-ounce molds. Fill each container 3/4 full. At this point, you can refrigerate or freeze the molds. Bring the cakes to room termperature before baking, approximately 40 min. if frozen, 15 if refrigerated.
- Bake on preheated baking sheet in a preheated 375-degree oven for 8 to 9 minutes. Unmold and serve immediately.
From Sebastien Cannone and Jacquy Pfeiffer, French Pastry School
[Cook’s note: I’d print the nutrition info provided at the bottom, but trust me, you don’t want to know. This is when it comes in handy to know you can freeze the ones you aren’t going to eat the night you make them.]
Timing is very important here; cook them a minute or two too long, and the centers won’t be liquid anymore. But they’ll still be delicious. And with that much butter, it’s difficult to burn them. Yum! Good luck!
Thanks! As far as the nutrition goes, I don’t think she needs to worry about the fat contents or anything. It’s a birthday! You’re supposed to go nuts, right? If I can’t serve immediately (we’re going to dinner somewhere beforehand) can I refrigerate it and then pop it back in the oven for a few minutes to get it all melty again? Or does it all soak into the cake and become non-liquidy anymore?
If you can stick to making these only on special occasions, you should be OK, in spite of the gallons of butter. It’s just that they’re highly addictive. 
I don’t think you can reheat them, but if they only take a few minutes to bake, why don’t you just bake them when you get back?
Enjoy, and I highly recommend raspberry sauce if you like that sort of thing. Some people recommend whipped cream, but I think it’s overkill.
Ah, in scanning the recipe I mixed up the 40 minutes with the 8 minute baking time. A raspberry sauce, huh? That sounds delicious. One restaurant served it with a Kahlua flavored ice cream which sounded pretty good. Maybe I should make a test run, you know, just to make sure they turn out all right. Yeah, it really might be best to do a few test runs…
When I worked as a pastry chef at one restaurant, I served these kinds of chocolate cakes as a dessert special. Eva Luna’s recipe is very similar to the one I used, so I won’t bother to write mine out. I served mine with a drizzle of vanilla anglaise sauce and a small scoop of five-spice ice cream.
A few tips:
Buy good chocolate. Stay away from Hershey’s, which can be chalky and acidic. Spend the extra and get something like Valrohna, Callebaut, or Scharffen-Berger.
Make sure the cups you use to bake the cakes in are well-greased and floured. It’s very frustrating to try to get them out if they stick in the cup.
You can make the batter early in the day and pour them into the cups and refrigerate them (as mentioned in the recipe). Keep your oven hot, and while you’re clearing away the dinner dishes, you can pop them into the oven.
Stupid question: Do you “pipe in” the center chocolate through a small hole, or does undercooking it guarantee that the chocolate center does not firm up? :rolleyes:
I’m hoping it’s just that it doesn’t cook all the way through since I have no idea how I’d pipe the chocolate in. So vanilla anglaise sauce and 5 spice ice cream? Can I ask what both of those are?
The latter, which is why timing is so important here. (And why the rolleyes smiley?)
And I definitely second JavaMaven’s recommendation to use really good chocolate.
I don’t know if you are near a store but Williams Sonoma has a good molten chocolate cake mix.
I think you’ll have no problem with the center staying liquid if you put the cakes into the oven while they’re still on the cool side.
Vanilla Anglaise Sauce is basically the base for vanilla ice cream–just in sauce form. I used real vanilla beans in it, so it was cream-colored with the little black specks in the sauce. I’d drizzle a little on the serving plate, place the cake on top, then top the cake with a little scoop of the ice cream. The 5-Spice ice cream was my own creation–I used Chinese 5-Spice mixture to flavor it, which is a mixture of cinnamon, clove, star anise, fennel and peppercorn.
That’s probably fancier than you might want to do, though. 
What do you think your girlfriend would like? Would she appreciate a fruit sauce, like a raspberry (probably the easiest to do), or something richer, like an ice cream?
I think I’ll make a little of the raspberry sauce on the side and leave it up to her if she wants to put it on. The vanilla anglaise and the 5 spice ice cream… yeah, I think I might have to go and buy a thing of Breyers instead. It sounds really good though. Just not within my skill level. The trick is knowing when to make it. She comes in on Friday, but her birthday isn’t until the next day. Should I freeze it over night? Or just chill it in the fridge? Decisions, decisions…
Rolleyes smiley = My dumb :smack:
Dear me, you’re not suggesting that a person bake a cake from a mix, are you?
Well, for an eight-year-old’s birthday party, perhaps . . .
I don’t get $8.25 an hour just to smile. 
Here’s a shot in the dark, but do any Cary, NC area dopers have an idea where I can buy a ramekin? I checked at Harris Teeter, and it was a no go. I figure I’ll try the Wal-mart tomorrow. The closest thing I could find were the disposable foil pans. Are those okay to use?
I’m not from NYC, but you can get them at a Linens and Things, Kitchens Etc, or a Bed Bath and Beyond. Any place that specializes in kitchen equipment will have them.
From the sound of the cake, you should make sure to get deeper ones, not the ones for creme brulee. This is a WAG, but I think they should be probably 1.5 to 2 inches deep, and about 3 inches diameter.
Er, I’m not from NC, either. Oops.
Bed Bath and Beyond? Really? I had no idea that they sold those kinds of things. I suppose that Beyond does encompass quite a bit though. One more related question: does the material it’s made out of make a difference?
Here is what all of them that I have seen look like. Apparently, Ace Hardware also sells them. I wouldn’t expect them to carry them in-store, though.