Recipe: Molten Choc Cake

The Man, he’s not a desserts type of guy. But there is only ONE particular type of dessert that will win him over and that would be the Molten Chocolate Cake. Even if he is stuffed, he will always find room in his tummy for a good Molten Chocolate Cake! To him a GOOD Molten Chocolate Cake is the type when the gooey chocolate flows out when you cut the cake into half.

It’s been a while since I made him his fave dessert, so I decided that this will be the perfect ending for our stay-in dinner on a Saturday evening.

As I happily shared the pics of a rather successful Molten Choc Cake on twitter and Instagram, Crystal from Expat Bostanions asked for the recipe, so here I am now sharing it all with you all.

Molten Chocolate Cake
(Serves 2 – 4 depending on size of ramekins)

Ingredients:
- Semi-sweet Baking Chocolate: 56.5 g (or 2 ounce)
- Butter: 56.5g (or 2 ounce) plus a little more to grease ramekins [bring butter to room temperature]
- 1 egg
- Caster Sugar: 37.5g
- All-purpose flour: 20g

Method:
1) Pre-heat oven at 180 degrees Celsius.
2) In a double-boiler, melt the Semi-sweet Baking Chocolate. Once chocolate is melted, it will give off a shiny sheen. Remove bowl from heat and add in the butter. Mix well until butter melts fully and set aside mixture to cool.
3) In a medium mixing bowl, beat the egg and sugar until light and fluffy (for about 3 mins by electric mixer). Add in choc-butter mixture, all-purpose flour and mix till flour and choc-mix is well-incorporated into the batter.
3) Butter bottom and sides of ramekins and pour in batter until it’s 3/4 filled.
4) Bake in pre-heated oven for about 10 to 15 minutes. Shorter baking time if you like the inside to be goey and longer baking time if you prefer the inside to be a little harder.
5) Remove cake from ramekins.
6) Serve immediately with a little icing sugar dusted on top OR with a scoop of your fave ice-cream.

Enjoy!!

My attempt at key lime tarts

Give me a dessert with lime/ lemon or anything zesty and citrusy, and I’m in sugar haven!  Of course, I love the occasional chocolate sweets but what really gets me going are the lemony types.

When we were in the States last year, I went sugar over-load savoring those key-lime pies for our desserts.  So this time round, I decided to try my hand at making some of these refreshing key lime tarts to satisfy those zesty-sugar cravings of mine.

Found a pretty simple recipe that a noob like me could follow closely for now, best part?  It doesn’t require any form of baking!  All I needed to get mini tart crusts that I got off the shelves from the supermarket.  The Man and I tried making the lime curd last week but followed the instructions wrongly, so I decided to re-do the whole batch of lime curd again.  And after slogging in the test kitchen for about 1.5hours, I popped these babies into the fridge to be chilled.  I’m pretty happy at how it turned out- both visually and in the taste department.

Refreshing whipped key lime tarts [Recipe slightly adapted from Barbara Bakes]

Makes about 12 tarts

Ingredients:

For the lime curd

• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 whole egg
• 1 egg yolk
• The juice from 5 key limes
• The zest from 2 key limes
• 3 tablespoons of butter

For the key lime filling of the tarts

• 200ml key lime curd
• 200ml of whipping cream
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 Tablespoon of sugar

Method:

1. To make the Lime Curd: Place the sugar, whole eggs, egg yolks, juice and zest in a medium pan and whisk to combine. Heat and continue to constantly whisk until the mixture turns pale and thickens (about 5 minutes). Remove from heat and whisk in the butter. Sieve the lime curd if needed to remove the zest bits.  Let the mixture cool. You could store the mixture in jars or an airtight container for up to one month in the refrigerator.
2. To make the tart filling: Whip the cream until it thickens (about 5 minutes) then add the vanilla and sugar. Fold the lime curd in with a rubber spatula and fill desired shells. Chill 2 hours then top with additional whipped cream if desired. I decorated the tarts with a slice of lemon and blueberries. Allow tarts to come to room temperature for 10 minutes before serving.

These tarts were simply refreshing and what I really needed to kick-start the week.  I couldn’t stop stuffing my face with them for it’s light and easy to eat!

OOH and update!  Probably inspired by these awesome food-bloggers – R from The Pleasure Monger and Sherie from Maameemoo – I’ve been playing around with my camera and attempting to take better stylised pictures with the food that I’ve been cooking.   Frustrated with a couple of failed submissions to Foodgawker and TasteSpotting, I decided to ‘suck’ in it and try harder at improving my styling skills and fooling around with the SLR that I loaned from the Man.  Also, thanks to the tips from R and online research, I’m finally happy with the shots that I took of the tarts.  Must have taken like 50 shots!  So, I submitted them to Foodgawker. It’s finally been accepted and published!!!!  It’s picture #10862! It’s also been featured on Tastelogie and Photograzing. 

So… at first you don’t succeed, you just keep on trying!