I've had this recently at three fancy restaurants (has it come back into fashion?) and decided to try and make it myself. It's an intensely chocolate dessert cake with a molten interior. My favorite was served unmolded on a plate, the other two were in the ramekins they were baked in. The challenge is getting the batter set just enough but not to much -- see my disastrous result below, and improvement after that.
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| Second Try: slightly over-baked, no liquid center |
I've halved the recipe from My Parisian Kitchen and am trying it first with the mediocre store brand chocolate (40% cocoa) I have on hand; she didn't specify the type of flour, so I used cake flour with 10% protein. If I can get the texture right -- delicate cake barely containing the liquid center -- I'll try again with good quality chocolate.
Serves 2 richly.
2 Eggs
70 g Sugar
67 g Dark Chocolate (55-70% cocoa)
60 g Butter, unsalted, cut into chunks
22 g Cake/Pastry Flour (Farina per a rebosteria)
pinch Salt
Butter, soft
Cocoa, for dusting, optional
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| Just five basic ingredients |
Melt the Chocolate with the Butter in a microwave (about one minute) or double boiler; let cool a bit to avoid cooking the Eggs.
Whisk the Sugar and Eggs together until smooth.
Slowly whisk the Chocolate mixture into the Egg mixture, whisking continuously.
Sift the Flour into the mixture and add a tiny pinch of Salt; gently whisk to combine.
Butter the insides of two 200-250 ml ramekins; optionally dust with Cocoa to coat bottom and sides.
Fill the ramekins with the batter.
My batter was about 325 ml and my ramekins are only 175 ml so the batter came up higher than I would have liked; fortunately it didn't overflow!
Chill in the fridge for at least an hour. You want them to be cold when they hit the oven so the outside bakes to become cake-y while the inside remains unset.
Preheat the oven to 200C.
Remove the ramekins from the fridge and bake about 10 minutes until the outside sets and the liquid sheen on the top disappears.
Serve immediately in their ramekins with a spoon.
(You might be able to invert these and gently release the cakes from the ramekins, but I've read that this is almost impossible. It might be facilitated by lining the ramekins with parchment, but bakers better than me use bottom-less baking circles lined with buttered parchment set atop parchment-lined baking sheets.)
Now the results... I cooked these directly from the fridge on the chilled baking sheet for 11 minutes. Then I inverted the less-risen one on the left to release it -- disaster!
An examination of the ramekin showed that there was only a hint of cake forming around the outside, and nothing on the bottom to encase the liquid center: it needed a lot more time in the oven. I put the taller one back in for another few minutes and you can see it rose a little more.
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| Improved rise but still not set below |
But this one too lacked any cake structure at the bottom and barely any around the sides -- just a little around the top edges. I need to adjust the time and heat to cook the cake on the bottom and sides.
Happily, it looks like my 175 ml ramekins will barely hold the batter and the soufflé-like top is quite appealing. Silicon baking molds might allow the heat to penetrate better and possibly release cleanly, but the shock of inverting the mold onto a plate still risks breaking the cake shell.
Next time... Don't use a chilled or even room temperature pan below the ramekins: it prevents heat from circulating around the bottom. Increase the cooking time, to at least 15 minutes. Perhaps remove the ramekins from the fridge while the oven is preheating to allow the ceramic to warm up a bit and give the lower part a chance to heat through; experiment by taking one ramekin out early, and/or by baking one 5 minutes longer than the other. Perhaps try spooning cooled batter into room temperature ramekins, or baking room temperature batter. Lots of things to try.
Second Try: 20 minutes -- cake-y all the way through
This time, I used better chocolate: 84% Cobertura Negra de Guayaquil Extra Bitter from Parami.
More importantly, I did not place anything below the ramekins (to let air circulate), and baked for 20 minutes at 200C. It was cake-like all the way through -- including the bottom -- with just a hint of not-quite-liquid chocolate in the center. At 15 minutes I saw liquid chocolate flowing out of the top like lava (onto the oven floor, oops), so I left it in another 5 minutes -- maybe I should have taken it out at 15.
Interestingly, they were set enough that they (barely) released, because they were almost as firm as a muffin or cupcake.
Next time, try 18 minutes, or maybe one at 15 and the other at 18 minutes.
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