Baking the Perfect Molten Lava Cake with Claire Saffitz | Dessert Person

can I brag for a minute these are eggs from our chickens see how yellow they are really Orange same color right hi everyone I'm Claire staffords welcome to my home kitchen today I have a recipe that I actually can't believe it's taken me this long to show you on dessert person it's in what's for dessert it is a molten chocolate cake and I actually feel like I have a secret to share with you guys because it's actually so so easy to make [Music] okay look if you have been in like any restaurant in America in the last 10 years you've probably seen on the dessert menu a molten chocolate cake this is at this point ubiquitous and it really started as a signature dessert of the chef Jean Georges um based in New York City and it's really just kind of like grown and become kind of a standard almost on a lot of dessert menus like I think Domino's Pizza has a molten chocolate cake I've never tried the Domino's one I have had the Jean George one which is excellent so this is definitely a chocolate lovers recipe but the point is it feels like a really fancy like fine dining dessert but it's actually incredibly easy you basically make like a modified brownie batter and bake it and what makes these molten is that you're not really fully baking them all the way through you're baking them at a super super hot temperature so that the outer layer sets and becomes kind of cakey and then the center is still liquid I have put a bit of a Twist on it not a big twist but just sort of a slight sort of variation that I really like and instead of using butter as the of fat here I'm using olive oil I like olive oil I love the flavor combination with chocolate that's to me like a wonderful pairing but I'm also doing it because it makes the batter slightly more fluid and you get an even more dramatic like molten effect when you split into the cake so it's twofold it's for texture and for flavor can you make it faster than the delivery can get it here I don't know if I could make it faster than Domino's could deliver but I will say that you can make this recipe from start to finish and have a molten chocolate cake on your plate in 45 minutes how does Domino's deliver it how does it like sit in a car for that long these cakes bake for six minutes so if I were to have like some prep time where I could just have the batter done I could definitely make it faster than Domino's can deliver get a pizza too oh delivery's not available in your area I'm secretly fully relieved foreign s in a brownie batter different proportions but very straightforward mostly Pantry items I have semi-sweet chocolate all-purpose flour truly like the smallest amount of flour olive oil as I said I'm making an olive oil version of this rather than butter I do have some room temperature unsalted butter just for greasing the molds and I'll talk about why that's important a little bit of extra flour for the molds then I have three whole eggs and six egg yolks and some kosher salt and some sugar special equipment the most important piece of equipment that you'll need is a mold these are actually mini brioche molds this is a six ounce Ramekin this works great another thing you can do and I have instructions for how to modify the recipe in the book is you can actually use a muffin tin you'll make more cakes because they're a little bit smaller but it works perfectly I tried it at home it's you get great results so that's another option as well but I'm going to use these fluted metal molds because they look so pretty and they're just the perfect size other special commitment you'll need a hand mixer and that's to beat the eggs to get them super frothy which is an important step other than that you just need couple bowls and I have a saucepan with some water to help melt the chocolate [Music] this is really important the worst outcome besides just overcooking them is that they stick in the molds because if they stick in the molds you're not gonna be able to get them out and then you might ruin that molten effect because you'll break the exterior so I'm going to use butter whenever I'm doing a baking recipe I like to use the same fat in the recipe for the molds because it's just sort of like more streamlined but in this case I don't want to use oil for the mold because it doesn't sort of apply thick enough and room temperature butter you can get a really like generous coating on there and that's going to make it super non-stick so I have room temp butter make sure your molds are also really clean that can lead to sticking if they're not clean these are fluted so I have quite a bit of surface area and that means I want to be very thorough about prepping these and when I bake these they get filled all the way to the very top so make sure that as you're greasing them whether you're using the Ramekin or the muffin tin you're getting all the way to the very top you know you don't want to necessarily leave like big hunks of butter in but I would say definitely air on the side of more rather than less so I'm going to take a little bit of flour I'm going to sprinkle it into the mold just a big pinch really tap it all around and I want to now then rotate the mold so that it gets onto every buttered surface and then tap out any excess and now you see I have this like perfectly covered really even I don't have big pockets of flour anywhere but there's a super even coating all around that's what you want so we did the one I'm going to do the rest and then we'll move on to the batter [Music] so all eight of my molds are done and this is a good time to mention that the recipe makes eight cakes that's kind of a lot you could definitely cut the recipe in half and only make four eight I think is great for entertaining but just keep in mind that because you're like working with so many molds when you come when it's time to unmold them and take them out of the oven you might want a couple sets of hands to help you get them out onto the plates really quickly this first step is very much like the first step when you're making brownies I'm just gonna melt the chocolate and the fat in this case olive oil typically this recipe calls for butter but I really like using olive oil here and you want to use like a good quality extra virgin olive oil but not one that's like so fancy or expensive that's just for drizzling but something I think with good flavor because you want that flavor to come through those three quarters of a cup so now I'm gonna get this over to my stove where I have a saucepan with a little bit of water on the bottom I'm going to turn that on so I'm gonna let that melt and I want it to get completely smooth so that all of the chocolate is totally melted and then I'm going to bring it over here and we're gonna start to put together the batter which starts by beating the eggs and sugar [Music] yeah the chocolate is melted it's totally smooth so I'm just going to set this aside so we can cool a little bit it's super fluid you really get the aroma of olive oil which I love now I have my hand mixer fitted with the beaters I'm going to take my whole eggs plus my yolks I have them already combined in here I'm going to go into a medium Bowl when I was developing this recipe I couldn't quite decide how to think about it because these have a lot in common with like souffles they're it's like a super eggy you know very very low flour if any kind of recipe it's almost custardy but it still is a cake so this is in the cakes chapter but the amount of flour that goes in is shocking it's two tablespoons of flour in the entire recipe so to the eggs I'm going to add the sugar I think it's a half cup of sugar it's not a lot of sugar a lot you know the sweetness is already coming from the semi-sweet chocolate so it's just sweetening it a little bit a teaspoon of kosher salt Diamond if you're using Morton cut it in half it's a half teaspoon like I always say and I'm gonna beat this this is really the key to this recipe is I'm going to beat this mixture until it's super light and voluminous and moussey it'll be about doubled in volume so I'm gonna start it on low and increase the speed you can see it's like super orange and liquid and so this is going to become pale and like really light and Airy and kind of thick it's become very airy and light I use the term Lucy like it looks like moose that's kind of the best way to describe it I know that I'm kind of at the point of Dennis because the beater is like a very faint Trail it disappears quickly but I can still see it so now I'm going to add my vanilla and my flour it's two teaspoons of vanilla extract and then my flour so two tablespoons flour that's it it's really just enough flour to like give a little bit of setting power but really the structure of this recipe is coming from the eggs [Music] still going to use my mixer I am going to stream the eggs into the bowl with my melted chocolate and oil and just beat it on low so I just really want to come by and I don't really want to like continue to whip it so I'm going to grab my bowl so on low speed what's going to happen is the chocolate and the eggs are going to emulsify and I'm gonna get this actually relatively thick batter egg all over my mixer I'm just going to scrape the rest of the egg in so I just want to mix this on low to combine everything so now I have this fluid evenly mixed batter I am going to scrape around the sides of the bowl a little bit and that's the batter it really did not take any time at all a few minutes to melt the chocolate a few minutes to beat the eggs and that's how it all comes together there's also a great great do ahead in this recipe although you want to be really time sensitive when it comes to baking you can mix the batter ahead fill the molds chill them it can be in the fridge for like 24 hours and as long as you pull them out and let them reach room temperature before baking you're good so all this can be done ahead of time I wouldn't chill them for more than 24 hours up until that point you'll be fine but again you want to bake them from room temp because that's going to give you the best molten effect so now I'm going to fill the molds I have sort of this you guys watch succession yeah I have this ludicrously capacious Bowl I'm Gonna Fill the molds you want to divide the batter evenly it's going to reach almost to the very top which is what you want so I'm just getting this out of this huge Bowl because it's going to be hard to portion and I have it in now this four cup measure which is just easier because it has a pour spout I'm going to fill them and it's going to be about a half cup of batter in each one there's actually sort of an advantage to making them in the muffin tin because you can unmold them all at the same time by just inverting it onto like a cutting board with these you go one by one I've said this many times that like I don't love chocolate flavor in combination with a lot of other flavors but if it's nuts or caramel or peanut butter or Sesame or olive oil I really like it you want them filled evenly so that they bake evenly but it's not really like that it's not that sensitive I have a rack in the center that's important because you want lots of air circulation all the way around all of the cakes you know generally I think there's a risk of over baking but you could still under bake them and I think how you would know if they're under baked is if you touch the center and like you have batter that like comes off on your finger then it's not done you should leave it a little longer but just know that like it'll be dry to the touch but you'll feel underneath it still feels sort of liquid that's the perfect level of doneness oh oh my god I've made some smoke so I'm going to set the timer for five minutes and then I'll check them I thought I got all the smoke out last night I baked something last night and I didn't it made smoke because Harris had cooked ribs in there and there had been some spillage I love my chocolate cake to tastes like ribs smoked chocolate that's like a thing people have smoked chocolate and ribs so now time is of the essence you're pulling away from the molds a little bit they've puffed and they're matte except for the centers are still kind of shiny but when I press on it you can almost see like right below the surface is liquid make sure you have something to protect your hand because they're actually quite hot so you're going to take the mold invert a plate invert them together and then pull off the mold look at how cute so I'm just gonna spoon in I love that there's like distinct like cake texture this to me is like such a good dessert I told people to make this for Valentine's Day it's like warm it's romantic it's kind of dramatic just really good um the Cake part on the outside is so light and I love that contrast between like incredibly light cake and molten very rich Center I would definitely like want less of milk with it or you can serve it with a little unsweetened whipped cream or a little ice cream but to me it's not like an overwhelming chocolate dessert so good so easy in my mind like this is not even that much more difficult than making brownies and so impressive and dramatic it's like that's why I feel like it's like a secret it's like you guys these are actually really easy to make and it's going to make you look like a professional pastry chef you guys did you have it did it fall over what are you talking did you have it on the seat and it did you like take a sharp right turn or something as far as the size it's very similar kind of smells away remember Cocoa Puffs cereal yeah kind of smells like Cocoa Puff cereal which I probably haven't smelled in 30 years the crunch probably helps them in transport makes them less delicate although we have we had some issues in like the real version the homemade version you can't can't like take this to go it's still warm honestly that's not bad like it's not running out but it's definitely a molten Center [Music] it's not that bad I actually think it has very good texture I wish it were more chocolatey I just give major props to Domino's for doing like lava cakes delivery that takes guts so thank you so much for watching and don't forget to like And subscribe I feel like my future I just like as a feeling I have I think I'm gonna get really into pizza good get your cameras out foreign [Music]

Channel: Claire Saffitz x Dessert Person

Views: 199,844

Keywords: Molten Lava Cake, Claire Saffitz, Dessert Recipes, Baking, Chocolate Desserts, Olive Oil, Gooey Center, Easy Recipes, Cooking, Molten Lava Cake Recipe, Claire Saffitz Dessert, Easy Chocolate Desserts, Best Molten Lava Cake, Quick Dessert Recipes, Gooey Center Dessert, Olive Oil in Baking, Claire Saffitz Recipe, Homemade Dessert Ideas, Lava Cake From Scratch, Must-Try Desserts., Gourmet Makes, Bon Appetit, Dessert Person, NYT Cooking, Easy Bake, Perfect Molten Lava Cake, DIY

Id: RPGAtfj4oto

Length: 14min 16sec (856 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 01 2023