Oh, Heaven!

Hello, friends! It's time for another episode of Gerb Uses A Million Pictures To Show Us How She Cooks Something Tasty.

Today's recipe?

Warm Chocolate Cakes from Communal Restaurant. Except that I prefer to call them Warm Molten Lava Chocolate Cakes From Heaven. And can I add: how awesome is a restaurant that shares their recipes? I haven't had the chance to eat here yet, mostly because every time I've tried to go (the gap between lunch and dinner and Monday evening) they're closed.

But, hey, Communal! I love you forever for letting me make these cakes at home. You seriously rock!

Here we go...

First off it says to melt the butter and chocolate together until smooth. I don't know about you, but I'm a specifics kind of gal. When I went to buy a pound (yeah, baby!) of chocolate I was worried I'd pick the wrong kind. Like, should I get Dove chocolates or Lindt chocolates? Or just go with the stuff in the baking aisle? I decided to just go with what I was used to and purchased two boxes of semi-sweet baking chocolate.

Since the directions didn't specify doing the double-boiler method (and I'm a short-cut kind of gal) I just threw all of the butter and chocolate into a large bowl and microwaved them for 2 minutes. It wasn't all melted, but I let it sit on the counter and continue melting as I stirred the mixture together.

Here it is almost melted...
And all done:
Next it calls for 6 eggs and 6 egg yolks. In case you've never seen 6 eggs in a bowl before, here you go:
I don't have any fancy kitchen tools (you'll learn more about this later) so I just separated my eggs with the back-and-forth into each half of the shell method until all that remained was a yolk, like so:
Save the whites for scrambled egg whites or whatever. Then add the yolks to the other 6 eggs and dump in the sugar.
Then beat...
I wasn't sure if these were beaten enough:
So I read the recipe again. It said to 'beat into a ribbon like consistency'. Honestly? I had no idea what in the world that meant. So I googled it and found this helpful little video: CLICK HERE. I beat them on a high speed for almost 5 minutes before they started to look right:
It sort of ends up looking like cake batter. And then I added the chocolate/butter mixture...
...and beat some more:
Here's what it looked like when it was done:
(In case you're wondering, those are air bubbles in that picture up there, not chunks of whoknowswhat.)

Next comes the flour and cocoa. I hadn't read the recipe closely enough to realize that I needed to actually weigh these two ingredients. What's a girl to do?! I asked for help with equivalents on Facebook and got all sorts of various answers. What I ultimately figured out was that I would have to actually weigh them or it might not turn out right. Lucky for me, a friend saw the whole discussion on Facebook and brought over her kitchen scale for my borrowing pleasure. (Thanks, Rachel!)

May I present for your viewing pleasure... five ounces of flour!
And one and a half ounces of cocoa!

The recipe said to stir these in, so here goes the flour:

And here comes the cocoa...

Once that's all mixed in you scoop the goodness into buttered ramekins. If you're like me, you're saying to yourself, I love the sound of that funky word, but what the heck are ramekins? I'll tell you all about how I came to own some of these sweet little bowlies RIGHT HERE in my post at 4Perspectives today. (Click on over! I'd love to have you!)

Anyhow... butter those ramekins up nice and slick so the cakes will fall out in a perfect little circle when they're done. I let a stick of butter get a little soft and then swished that butter stick around each one until they were good and coated...
Chocolate batter from heaven, meet your new BFFs, my ramekins:
The recipe says it makes 24 and I only used 12 ramekins so I tried to estimate how much to put into each one. I decided that 1/2 cup would be as good a guess as any. Hello, ramekins! I'm chocolatey goodness. Nice to meet you!
Once they were all filled I had to let the batter 'cool at least 2 hours'. I wasn't sure if that meant sit on the counter or put it in the refrigerator for 2 hours so I played it safe and stuck these babies in the fridge.

I took them out about 20 minutes before baking so the batter wouldn't be TOO cool, but I'm not sure if that was necessary. While these morsels were cooking I whipped up some cream. Vanilla ice cream would be the perfect complement, too - but I love me some freshly whipped cream.
Here they are! All done.
I'm pretty sure that my ramekins must be larger than the suggested 4 to 6 ounce ramekins because I could have used all of the batter in my 12 ramekins (I love saying that word!) and the cakes would have filled each one. But I'm not complaining. I have enough batter in my fridge to make about 5 more of these decadent treats and you better believe I'll be baking up a little smackerel for my man and myself after the kids are in bed later this week. (In the comments on the link for the recipe it states that the batter can be refrigerated for up to 3 weeks.)

These little cakes are seriously amazing. The outside is cakey, the inside is molten chocolate and the whipped cream or ice cream balances out the richness just perfectly.

Coolister loved having them for his seventeenth birthday treat on Monday night...
And there were just enough for everyone. (Meaning: one for everyone else and two for me.)

What are you waiting for? Go make your own little melt-in-your-mouth treats. But keep your windows shut or the neighbors will all want some, too. You'll likely gain weight just by inhaling the rich aroma of these as you pull them out of the oven.



Warm Chocolate Cakes (from Communal Restaurant)

1 lb. butter
1 lb. chocolate
6 egg yolks
6 eggs
1 cup sugar
5 oz. flour
1.5 oz. cocoa

Melt butter and chocolate together and stir until smooth. Beat yolks, eggs and sugar into a ribbon like consistency. Slowly beat chocolate into egg and sugar mixture until smooth. Then slowly stir in flour and cocoa. Do not over mix. Divide into 4 to 6 ounce buttered ramekins and cool at least 2 hours. Bake at 425 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes. Serve immediately with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. Makes 24 cakes.