HCB: Molten Chocolate Souffle and Lava Cake

My blog has a mind of its own this morning and decided to publish a post that is still at an early writing post, just as I was typing it! This happens to me sometimes when I typed email using my yahoo email account, but never with the blog before.

Anyway, this is my last cake from the baby cake chapter. I know it's kinda backwards because we still have the Peanut Butter Ingots next week. But see I made that baby a couple of months ago. The post is written and ready to go. So technically this is my last baby cake.

And I have to say that I'm going out with a bang. I was not looking forward to this cake. It looks and sounded too rich. As much as I love chocolate cakes, overly rich ones are not my favorites. But this cake surprised me.

There seem to be a lot of steps for this cake, but they are all pretty easy.



The ganache part of this cake is pretty straight forward. Melt the chocolate over hot water, then pour the hot cream in and mix until incorporated.

As the ganache was cooling, I thought of adding some grand marnier for more flavor. Chocolate and orange is my favorite flavor combo.

The cake is pretty easy also and it's one of those cakes that you can mix without any mixer. First melt dark chocolate, cocoa, and butter. Let it cool. Combine the yolks and creme fraiche (I used sour cream) into the chocolate mixture. Add a bit of the whites to help incorporation. Then whisk the remaining whites until stiff peak, fold into chocolate mixture.

The round ganache centers reminds me of meatballs.

For such baby cakes, it sure produced a lot of dishes!

I didn't eat the cake until the next day, so unfortunately there's no picture of the molten chocolate in this post.

Tasting impressions:
HELLO Chocolate Heaven!!! I heat up the cake for 10 seconds and it is warm, soft, and heavenly. I wish I have some vanilla ice cream so I can scoop it up on this baby. This cake is tasted fudgy but moist. Chocolatey and rich but just enough richness to make you want another piece maybe. Or look forward to your next piece tomorrow. I saved 2 cakelets in the freezer for the future. Now I think I will eat them sooner than I had planned.