Baking tips to follow while making Choco-lava cake

Notes that I took while making these cup cakes:

Image Source

• Add a pinch of baking powder in the batter.
• Once your batter is prepared, filter it two or three times to make it even smoother. You’ll get the perfect batter for your cup cakes. This is the trick I learned from my friend’s mom who also loves to bake.
• If you bake your lava cakes in ramekins, you’ll get the best results as a ramekin holds the batter perfectly and doesn’t even ruin the shape. Plus, you can serve and eat your lava cake in it only. 
• Do not bake them in silicon molds. Otherwise they wouldn’t bake at all.
• Do not bake for more than 15 mins.
• Fill only 1/3 of the mold if you have added baking powder. Otherwise the muffin will burst from the center and would begin to act like a volcano.
• If you haven’t added baking powder, fill each container with 2/3 batter.
• According to the recipe of choco-lava cake that I posted, the batter should make more than 16 lava cakes if filled 1/3 in each container.
• Sprinkle little icing sugar over the cake before serving only and serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It is the perfect combination.
• If you do not have vanilla ice cream, serve with strawberries and little chocolate syrup or melted chocolate at the top.
• If you are not serving your cakes directly after putting them out of your oven, then before serving them to anyone, do microwave your cake at 15-20 seconds as choco lava are best served hot.

Choco lava cake

Ingredients                                                                          Makes four servings

1 stick (Half cup) butter
114 grams bittersweet or semisweet chocolate
1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
2 whole eggs
3 egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup all-purpose flour

Procedure:

• Preheat your oven to 425ºF (220ºC).
• Spray four custard cups with baking spray and place on a baking sheet.
• Microwave the butter, bittersweet chocolate and semisweet chocolate in a large bowl on high until the butter is melted, about 1 minute. Whisk until the chocolate is also melted. Stir in the sugar until well blended. Whisk in the eggs and egg yolks, then add the vanilla. Stir in the flour. Divide the mixture among the custard cups.
• Bake until the sides are firm and the centers are soft, about 13 minutes. Let stand 1 minute. Invert on individual plates while warm and serve with vanilla ice cream.

In my next posts, I’ll be sharing with you the important tips that you should follow while making these choco-lava cup cakes for the first time because even I made many mistakes the second time I tried to bake them.

Decorating your cake and cupcakes

Well, I know that not everybody can make the frosting without the electric mixer. So, here are some ideas which might be helpful:

• Decorating your cake with Nutella: Instead of frosting, if you have nutella, you know what to do. Then, to make it more attractive, you can decorate it further with some dry fruits, fruits, gems, etc.

• Just walnuts and almonds will do too: If you don’t have nutella, you can decorate your cake with dry fruits as well. All you have to do is before putting your cake’s batter into the oven/microwave, cover the top of the batter with almonds (cut into half or four), or walnuts or raisins.

(Well you can of course use more dry fruits and raisins)

(Like This. Image Source: Google)

• Substitute of Nutella: If you do not wish to spend your money on nutella, you can use some chocolates too. White or dark, it’s your choice. Buy 2-3 of them. (Well, I use 2 five star chocolates because they have so much caramel and I love its taste. You can use your favourite chocolate), melt them in the microwave with 1 tablespoon of butter and you can use some honey too if you want. Mix them all together and cover your cake in your favorite chocolate frosting. 😉

• Chocolate and vanilla cake: If you do not have any chocolates and just cocoa powder. You can still give your cake a very creative look using cocoa powder. When you’ve prepared your vanilla or milk cake batter, divide it into two and pour half of the batter into another bowl. Now, in one of the batter, put some cocoa powder and mix it well. Now you have two different batter- one vanilla and the other cocoa. First, pour your vanilla batter into the baking pan. Then after 2 minutes, put your cocoa batter over it but DO NOT combine them. There should be two layers of layers of batter. Then bake it. Simple! This way you don’t have to make two separate layers of cake and go through the process of combining those layers with chocolate in between. If you have time and chocolate/frosting, you can do that too. The layers will not be perfect though but it’s less time consuming and it will still look good. Little bit like a marble cake. 🙂

• Marble Cake: Best. Do the same with batter as shown above and before putting your cake into oven, just take a toothpick and make a heart or any random design in the batter with the toothpick so that it looks like this:

And then bake it. And when you’ll cut your cake, you’d fall in love with it. It will look something like this:

(Image Source: Google) But well, i HAVE tried it and baked it several times. 😛

Upcoming post: 9th August

“A Hefty Eater” will be publishing it’s next post on August 9th.

My upcoming post Baking tips for “Preparing the cake batter” will be about the basic yet very important tips and procedure that people who love to bake and also starters should follow as these techniques will give you the perfect consistency of the cake.

Follow my blog for more updates.

Thank you! ^_^