Molten Chocolate Cake

When I came across this recipe, I thought it was pretty funky. The whole idea behind this cake is that when you eat the cake, warm melted chocolate comes oozing out. Sounds good? It definitely is! Sounds difficult? It's no more difficult than a normal cake, really. So here's what you have to do:

What you need:
For the cake:
115g plain chocolate, broken into squares
175g unsalted butter or margarine, softened
200g light muscovado sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
3 eggs, beaten
150ml Greek-style yoghurt
150g self-raising flour

1 bottle Hershey's hot fudge topping
Vanilla icecream
*Snucker's Magic Shell chocolate topping (hardens in contact with icecream)

What to do:

1. Preheat the oven to 190 C. Grease well the cups of a large muffin pan/small cake moulds - about twice the size of a normal muffin.
2. Make the cake: Melt the squares of plain chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of hot water, or in a microwave.
3. In a mixing bowl, cream the butter or margarine with the sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the vanilla essence, then gradualy add the beaten eggs, beating well after each addition.
4. Stir in the melted chocolate and yoghurt evenly. Fold in the flour using a mtal spoon.
5. Divide the mixture between the cake tins. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until firm to touch. A satay stick stuck into the centre should come out clean. Turn out all the cakes out of the moulds and leave to cool.
6. Flip over the cooled cakes so that the bigger side is the base (trimming the bottom if necassary). Cut out a 1 1/2 inch diameter cylindrical chunk in the centrem about 1 1/2 inches deep. Scoop out cake out of the whole with a teaspoon.
7. Load the Hershey's fudge topping into each hole, and store in a sealed container in the refrigerator.
8. When ready to serve, heat one cake at a time on a small plate in a microwave for about 40-45s on high until the fudge bubbles. Let rest for about 30s, and place a scoop of icecream over it. Pour a coating of Magic Shell topping. Serve immediately.

And that's that! The original recipe actually asked you to use a chocolate fudge cake mix (so it would be even easier), but I figured might as well use a proper recipe for that. Just use your favorite chocolate cake recipe, it should work well. Just make sure the resulting cake isn't too soft.

Also, I cannot find the Magic Shell topping thing in Brunei. I saw one in UK last time, but I forgot to buy it... *sigh* I drizzled more of the Hershey's topping on top, but feel free to add whatever you like. Different flavour topping maybe, or whipped cream? Up to you ;) And I included a little picture of the cake mould I used, so you can get an idea of the size. It was really hard to find, but finally managed to locate ones of suitable size in the Mall's Utama Jaya.

Anyway, the cake is really yummy. Make sure you microwave it. This makes the cake nice and warm and the chocolate all melty *drool* The warm cake, when added with the cold icecream is super yummy! Everyone I fed this to really liked it, so I think for the bakers among you, this would be worth your while :D

Oh yea, the chocolate fudge kind of seeped through the cake slightly when I loaded it, so maybe it would be better if you added it right before you serve it, so that the cake is not so soggy. When making the hole, make sure you don't cut right through the bottom. Otherwise, this would defeat the purpose. And I lost one unfinished cake to an early enthusiast, so make sure you keep the cakes away from people before you prepare it properly as well :P

So anyway, make this and prepare for people to be reall y impressed ;) Ok, so the visuals of my cake don't really look all that good :P I couldn't find our icecream scooper and had to use a spoon instead. Also, when I cooled the cake, it was slightly tilted, so the cake looks like the leaning tower of Pisa. But no worries! The taste more than makes up for it! And with enough practice, a pretty cake should be easy enough to achieve. The only problem now is the whole calories deal, haha ;)