I'm Back!

Well that was a bit of hiatus wasn't it? I have no excuses besides laziness. But I've been approached to do cupcakes again for my favorite little coffee shop so I'm excited about baking again and getting back into it full force! To start I ran right out and bought a 5 lb bag of flour and a 10 lb bag of sugar! Ooh baby, that's a good start! I wasn't planning on starting until Thursday to get some good weekend sales in on the cupcakes but Chuck had a long, pretty ugly day at work. He determined that the only thing to cheer him up would be some molten lava cakes. I'm not one to argue against the healing powers of chocolate so I was up for the task!

I found a very simple recipe at Tasty Kitchen. Seriously, it's 5 ingredients and one bowl! You can get much easier than that folks. So thanks to the lovely Brandielle, I had my task set!

I did not have any baker's chocolate but I did have:

When I bought this, my incredibly intelligent 6 year old who reads EVERYTHING asked "why is it called 'Special'" and my only answer was, "because it is!"

So I took my "Special" chocolate, melted it with some butter, added some sugar, eggs, and flour, and viola!

The recipe calls for this being baked in 4 custard cups but since my husband bought me this pan, he insisted I use it! And again, I don't argue when it comes to chocolate so I did! So it only made 2 cakes. Since the girls were already in bed, that was ok with us. We don't share chocolate in our house.

Now, since I was making much larger cakes, I probably should have increased the time by more than the 2 minutes that I did. So I would recommend 18-20 minutes of baking. But Chuck prefers raw batter so it worked out for the best. I did not have any cream in the house so we omitted the fresh whipped cream but I am sure that it would have been fabulous! And as a tip - I always add a splash of vanilla when I make homemade whipped cream. Try it once, you'll thank me!

This is how I wanted it to look:This is how it really looked:But it tasted fabulous!! Warm and melty chocolate will fix the worst of days! I promise!

Molten Lava Cakes:
4 pieces (squares) Semi-sweet Baking Chocolate (or 1/2 cup Special Dark chips)
½ cups Butter
1 cup Powdered Sugar
2 whole Eggs
2 whole Egg Yolks
6 Tablespoons Flour
2 cups Real Whipping Cream
2 Tablespoons Sugar

1 tsp Vanilla (trust me!)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Spray 4 custard cups (or 2 ginormous muffin cups) with Pam and place on cookie sheet.
Microwave chocolate and butter in large bowl on high for about 1 minute, until butter is melted. whisk until chocolate is also melted.
Stir in sugar until well blended. Whisk in eggs and egg yolks. Stir in flour.
Divide between cups.
Bake 13-14 minutes until sides are firm and center is soft. (or 18-20 if you're making the big daddies) Let stand 1 minute.
Combine sugar, heavy cream and vanilla and whip until stiff.
Invert cakes on dishes and top with whipped cream. It's best to serve these immediately. Cold lava becomes pretty darn hard, doesn't it? I'm just sayin'.

Because I've been away for so long, I'm going to leave you with a bonus recipe. You see, this cake calls for 2 eggs and 2 egg yolks. That leaves 2 egg whites all by their lonesome and I just can't have that! So I saved them for the morning.

Have you heard of Hungry Girl? She is the guru of eating the good stuff but in lighter forms. I took my little lonely egg whites and transformed them into one fabulous Egg Mug!

Here's how:

2 egg whites + one whole egg (I had just one left in the fridge and I am very opposed to lonely eggs)

1 wedge Laughing Cow swiss cheese

1 slice deli ham

I scrambled those eggs in my favorite mug that I got in Berlin, added the cheese, ham, and some salt & pepper, microwaved it for 1 min, stirred and then nuked it for 30 more seconds and got this:

Are you hungry yet?? Look at that yummy, creamy mug of deliciousness!

Happy Baking!