Perfect Lava Cake

This post makes me really happy. Some of you may remember that in one of my first blogposts I attempted to bake a warm chocolate soufflé with a liquid inside. 

Well, looking back now I have to admit that didn't work out that well. 

Even though it was still a tiny bit liquid inside, it simply wasn't chocolaty enough.

Good, but not good enough... I know, I kind of raved about how good it was. 

But let's face it: It was my first blogpost, I was all excited and proud. But with a little bit more experience, I can only recommend you to FORGET ABOUT THIS RECIPE! 

I found a lava cake recipe that is way better and easier to prepare. And I can guarantee you that it will stay perfectly liquid inside, if you follow my instructions.

What you need:

6 eggs (medium-sized, at room temperature)

225g / 7.6 oz refined sugar

90g / 3 oz flour

170g / 5.7 oz bittersweet chocolate 

(good quality, like Valhrona or Lindt, with at least 60% cocoa)

170g / 5.7 oz butter

some butter and sugar for the soufflé cups

Directions:

Preheat oven to 160°C/320°F.

Using a hand blender mix eggs, sugar and flour in a large bowl.

Melt chocolate and butter over a bain marie (bowl in a hot water bath). 

Slowly add the chocolate-butter to the egg-sugar mix while blending.

Butter the cups and sprinkle with sugar.

Fill each cup to about 2/3 or 3/4 with the chocolate batter (the lava cake won't rise that much).

Place cups on top of a cookie sheet and bake for about 10 minutes. 

My lava-cake needed much longer. Could be because I have a gas-oven where the heat does not circulate that evenly. I did one test cake and checked after 8 minutes for the first time, and then every 2-3 minutes.That way you get a good idea of how long they need to bake.

You can tell the lava cakes are perfect, when the edges are firm, but the center is still runny. 

Take the cakes out of the oven, carefully run a knife  around the edges to loosen the cakes from the cups.

Invert the cakes onto plates, garnish if you like and serve immediately!

Notes: 

• I served hot cherry-elderflower sauce with mine!

• To make it a little less sweet, try using brown instead of refined white sugar. I haven't done tried that before, therefore I don't know if it'll work, though...

Sea Salt Caramels With Bittersweet Chocolate

Whereas usually I bake cookies for christmas last christmas I decided to surprise my loved ones with homemade chocolates instead. I always thought the combination of caramel and salt is ingenious. Caramel simply tastes better with a dash of salt. 

So I decided to make chocolates with a salted-caramel filling and searched the internet for a good recipe.

This one here on About.com sounded quite promising, and I decided to give it a try.

Ok, I need to confess something here. I kind of messed the recipe up. But making caramel and chocolates can be quite tricky, and so it happened that I misread a few things and didn't pay proper attention. Mine turned out way too heavy and too salty. Otherwise they would have been delicious, I swear. But I will point out exactly where I did wrong so this won't be happening to you, as well. Yes, I will at some point make them again. And for all the family members who were wondering why I had decided to kill them with a butter and salt overdose: Sorry...it was so much work that I simply could not toss all these little "goodies". I really hope they weren't that bad....

Anyway, here we go!

You'll need:

320 ml / 1 1/3 cup heavy cream

400g / 2 cups granulated sugar

120ml / 1/2 cup light corn syrup (or rice syrup, which you can get in organic stores/Bio-supermarkets)

80ml / 1/3 cup honey

6 Tbsp (85g or 3oz!!!) cold butter, cut into small pieces 

- Mistake No.1: I used about 200g (2.5oz) butter...

1tsp vanilla extract

3tsp sea salt (fleur de sel) 

- Mistake No2: Only 2tsp go into the caramel, the 3rd one is for garnish

450g / 1lb bittersweet chocolate, chopped

Directions: 

Prepare an 8-inch baking pan by lining it with aluminum foil and spraying the foil with nonstick cooking spray.

Place the cream in a large saucepan over medium-high heat and bring it to a boil. Stir in the sugar, corn syrup and honey and stir until it begins to boil. Periodically wipe down the sides of the pan with a pastry brush dipped in water to prevent sugar crystals from forming.

the caramel already turned a little browner but needs to get way darker

Cook the caramel, stirring occasionally, until it reaches 257 degrees on a candy thermometer.                 

I didn't have a candy thermometer, and it still worked out fine. You just really have to pay attention. Never leave the pot alone or get distracted. It takes a while until the caramel turns brown. It takes another while until the caramel gets darker brown. But then everything goes really quick and before you know it you may end up with burnt caramel. A thermometer may be a help but it's all about how quickly you can pull the caramel off the heat.

I also read on David Lebovitz's blog that you should avoid stirring the caramel if you can. Only carefully scrape the bottom of the pot every once in a while to prevent the caramel from burning.

You can see here, how dark my caramel got. The yellow part is the massive amount of butter, I stirred in...

Remove the pan from the heat immediately and stir in the butter, vanilla, and 2 teaspoons of salt.

Pour into prepared pan and let set at room temperature until firm enough to cut.

I couldn't cut my caramel at all. It was way too soft.

Cut the caramel into small squares or strips with a chef’s knife.

That's why I pulled out little bits and formed them to chocolates.
Btw, you see those tiny brown spots? That just indicates that my caramel almost burned.
I guess I was lucky.

See, due to the fact that I used far too much butter my caramel was way to soft to be cut. I had to put the whole pan intothe freezer, then pull out some caramel balls with my hands, form them and again put them back into the freezer. otherwise they would have just melted away once the melted chocolate would have hit it...

Temper the chocolate and dip the caramels in the chocolate one at a time. Place them on a baking sheet covered with waxed paper or foil to set. While chocolate is still wet, sprinkle on the remaining salt and allow to set completely.

PS: Even though I messed up a bit here, I can only highly encourage everyone to try making these chocolates. They will be absolutely delicious, when done right and make a wonderful gift!

The Vegan Experiment Day 6 - The best chocolate-cherry muffins ever! And they happen to be vegan...

Having had pretty mediocre and bad vegan cakes, muffins, ice cream and chocolates in the past days I decided to take on the challenge and make sweet baked goods that actually taste yummy and not like "the vegan version of...". Therefore I searched the internet for cakes that happen to be vegan, but were not necessarily intended to be vegan (you understand what I mean?). 

Again Epicurious.com was the website were I was lucky to find this fantastic recipe! 

They are so dark, it's even hard to photograph them!

I modified it a bit and made probably the best chocolate-cherry muffins in the whole wide world! Seriously! I will definitely make them again. So, so good!

They are so easy and quick to prepare, and you probably have (almost) all the ingredients at home already. The dough is incredibly moist and almost creamy. 

It's rich. It's dark. It's how a good chocolate cake has to be like.

What is interesting is that, except for maybe eggs, a lot of cakes don't even need animal products like milk or butter. Don't get me wrong, I love butter. But butter  burns quicker and makes cookies, cakes & co turn out crispier. I learned that in order to get a moist and soft cake, you're better to use margarine. The best results I had so far were with oil, though.

Eggs are responsible for the density in a cake. They add flavour and color and are part of the maillard-reaction, as well. But it won't make the dough rise or anything. That's what you use the baking soda,  baking powder or yeast for. 

There can be dough without eggs.

And here is the proof!

...and they were so soft that it was tricky to remove them from the pan without having them fall apart.

All you need for the basic recipe is:

• 2 1/4 cups (270g) organic all-purpose flour
• 2 cups (450g) organic cane sugar
• 1 cup (120) organic unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon organic vanilla extract
• 2/3 cup (160ml) organic canola oil
• 2 teaspoons organic white vinegar
• 2 cups (480ml) cold water - I  the juice of canned morello cherries instead and added the cherries to the dough, as well.

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C. Grease two 8- or 9-inch round cake pans, or place liners in 2 muffin pans for 24 cupcakes. Set aside.

In a large bowl, sift the dry ingredients together. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, mix the vanilla extract, oil, vinegar, and cold water.

Slowly whisk the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, being careful not to overmix. 

The mixture will be quite wet, but this is okay.

Pour the batter into the prepared pans and bake until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean, about 30 minutes. 

For cupcakes, the baking time is 24 to 26 minutes.

Cool in the pans for 10 minutes, then invert onto a wire rack to cool. 

The ones on the top are the coffee muffins, the ones on the bottom are with cherries.

 

PS: 

Instead of the two cups/480ml of water, you can use whatever liquid you want. This time I used cherry juice. But I also tried it with strong coffee, which turned out really good, as well.

Or how about orange, cranberry or banana juice? Or even red wine? Yum.

Coffee banana muffins with dark chocolate chunks

I made these coffee banana muffins with dark chocolate chunks a while ago,
but didn't have the time to write about them, yet.

If you happen to have over riped bananas at home that you don't feel like eating anymore,
don't throw them away!
You can make great banana bread with those.

I decided to turn the banana bread I usually make into muffins and brought them over to our friends Anna and Beau who were having some friends from Edmonton staying at their house.

Because our friend Anna is allergic to nuts and Wil isn't such a big fan of walnuts I replaced the walnuts with dark chocolate chunks. 

No matter if you decide to make the banana bread or muffins, the recipe stays the same. Only the baking time is different.

What you need:

3 ripe bananas

200g dark chocolate chunks or 100g chopped walnuts

3 Tbsp strong coffee (warm not hot!)

110 g margarine

190g brown sugar

1/2 package of vanilla sugar

2 large eggs

300g all purpose flour

2Tbsp baking powder

1 dash of salt

Preheat the oven to 170ºC.

Remove the skin, then mash the bananas with a fork until mushy.

In a large bowl mix margarine, eggs, coffee, sugar and vanilla sugar with the mashed bananas and with a handmixer whisk everything until smooth.

Mix flour, salt and baking powder.

Slowly add the flour mix to the other ingredients and whisk everything well for about 2 minutes.

Mix in the dark chocolate chunks/chopped walnut.

Pour the batter into either a greased muffin or cake tin. The batter will rise in the oven. Therefore each muffin form only needs to be filled half way.

Bake the muffins for approx. 20 minutes.

The banana bread will need approx. 50 minutes in the oven.

Let everything cool down for a bit, then serve!