Molten Chocolate Cake

Around a specific time of the month...well really ANY time of the month is good for this cake! What I like about it, is that it's made in ramekins and so it is already portioned out for me!

Molten Chocolate Cake (makes 2 cakes) original recipe at Food&Wine.com

Ingredients:

1/2 stick of unsalted butter

3 oz. bittersweet chocolate (see note below for substitutions using other chocolates)

1 large egg

1 egg yolk

1/8 cup sugar

pinch of salt

1 tbsp all-purpose flour

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Butter and flour two 6 oz. ramekins.

2. In the microwave, melt chocolate and butter together in a bowl.

3. In a large bowl, beat together egg, egg yolk, and sugar until thick and pale. (I had no electric beater, so using a fork I was only able to get the eggs to be frothy at best. The dessert still came out perfectly fine, but I imagine if you want a fluffier cake then go for the pale thickness using electric beaters.)

4. Stir in melted chocolate and flour and mix well. Spoon into prepared ramekins, and set on a flat baking sheet. Bake in the oven for 12 minutes. The sides of the cake will rise and look cake-y, while the center remains liquid and batter-like in appearance. Remove from oven and let sit for 1 minute in ramekins.

5. Place an inverted plate on top of the ramekin and turn over. Wait 10 seconds before un-molding the ramekin. Dust with confectioner's sugar and serve immediately, preferably with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Enjoy! :)

Note: I had no bittersweet baking chocolate on hand, so I made an improvisational substitution using 2 oz. unsweetened chocolate + 1.5 tbsp sugar + 1/2 oz. semisweet chocolate + 1/2 oz. milk chocolate. You are trying to achieve about a 60% cocoa content to 40% sugar content in the final chocolate. Unsweetened chocolate clearly has no sugar, so I added 1.5 tbsp, which is about 1.5 oz., thus making the chocolate approximately 60% cocoa to 40% sugar (1.5 oz. sugar out of 3.5 oz. total). Then throwing in the semi-sweet (50% cocoa) and milk chocolate (30% cocoa) gave me something probably similar to semi-sweet chocolate in the end, which was a very rich chocolate without too much sweetness. Feel free to experiment with chocolate here to suit your sweetness preference.