Chocolate Lava Cake From Scratch

hello fellow chocolate lover it's hard not to love chocolate and by chocolate i mean your classic dark chocolate or milk chocolate if you like white chocolate get out of here just kidding caramelized white chocolate happens to be one of the best flavors i've ever had in my life but with that said there's something about just regular dark chocolate that's amazing when i was younger it was way too bitter for me and while i don't like chocolate ice cream i'm more of a vanilla guy my favorite dessert of all time just so happens to have its roots in chocolate it's the chocolate lava cake to me a chocolate lava cake is like if a brownie and brownie batter that's uncooked had a baby it is just so incredibly good it's ooey it's gooey it's a little crispy crunchy on the outside everything about a lava cake is perfect and with a good lava cake you get that hot lava that just melts out oozes out onto your plate and gives you almost a sauce to eat it with what can't you love about it the cool thing is today i'm gonna make a lava cake in a very untraditional way i'm making it from scratch but i'm going a step further i'm making it from a cacao pot and i'm telling you right now it's gonna be delicious now a lot of you may already have seen my video making chocolate from a cacao pod that's obviously the most basic straightforward way to take a cow and turn it into a product that everybody knows and loves what i'll do here is a similar process but i'll take it a step further when i crack this open i'll have to ferment and then roast the seeds inside from there i'll separate out the cacao nibs and then blend these into a chocolate paste that i'll combine with some nice butter and other ingredients to make our lava cake batter then we'll see how it turns out so let's crack this open everybody already knows i like the karate chop method and it's all about the form yeah i could be boring and use a knife and open this up that way and maybe i'll do that for one of them so you can see how pretty it looks but the karate chop method is where it's at when you open a cacao pod so if you ever get one of these make sure just remember this okay and here we are we've actually ejected several seeds in the process with this pod i know i said it was boring but i'm gonna cut this one open so you can see another fun way to open them without ruining them i'll first gently cut my knife right along the edge not too deep so that i destroy the seeds inside then i'll make just a really small cut right across with the same thing right on the other side and i'll finish by cutting one more time on the other end eventually wedging this piece right off inside this you'll see the seeds perfectly wedged together and it's a beautiful way to look inside the pond this lets me simply flip it over and still have that beautiful cacao pod to look at and cherish with the paella karate chopped i'll break this open and dump the seeds into my bowl those of you who follow me know that i've used these a lot and you'll be used to this sticky sound listen it's really crazy every time i look at this to think that this is what makes chocolate inside this delicate white flesh that happens to be amazingly delicious are cacao seeds and inside those are cacao nibs people describe the seeds in a lot of ways and i've heard people say they taste like lychee sorry i know i always pronounce that word wrong or those high chew candies or even jolly ranchers i'll add the contents of both cacao pods to my bowl eating the flesh off these eats is quite honestly one of my favorite things in the world so don't mind if i do for me one of the coolest parts about this is it's never the same and today it's a little bit more citrusy than other days i first have to ferment these seeds but i won't make you way through that process i just want to show you the lava cake i'll spread these out on a nice large baking tray where they'll bake for about an hour and a half at 300 fahrenheit or about 150 celsius if you do this your entire kitchen and maybe house will smell like chocolate it's the most exciting smell you can possibly get in the kitchen i found so let's roast them i do have this big beautiful hunk of chocolate and i will say that i'm beyond tempted to just cut off a nice piece of this and use that but we gotta use our own chocolate here and we gotta stay strong now you'll see that when they come out of the oven they're really dry and almost look kind of burnt but if you look very closely you'll actually notice they aren't burned they're just properly roasted now again inside the sea is our cacao nibs i'll break this open to show you do you recognize that once i remove the shell these things right here are cacao nibs and like i often say sometimes you'll find these on smoothie bowls or that kind of thing they're a really delicious snack by themselves but let's now turn them into a lava cake with a scale here i'm going to measure about six ounces of our cacao nibs again we're going to turn these into a puree sort of the same look we get from melted chocolate and that's what we'll be using in our lava cakes six ounces of home roasted cacao nibs i'll add these to my food processor along with a quarter cup of sugar and then i'll blend it up your cacao nibs will turn into a coarse wet paste you don't have to add anything just blend them for long enough scrape around the edges of your bowl then let this blend just a minute or two more to get it nice and smooth now over a double boiler add your six ounces of chocolate keeping in mind that if you're not using cacao nibs you can just use regular shaved bittersweet chocolate for this along with one full stick of butter that's been cut into cubes now stir this until all the butter has been melted this method i'm using is a really great way to melt down something like chocolate that you'd normally be worried about burning once all that chocolate is nice and silky smooth we're ready to add the rest of the ingredients scrape your edges and remove this bowl from the heat now in a medium-sized bowl i'm going to crack two eggs try to nail the one-handed egg crack if you can and then i'll separate out two yolks by pouring them into my hands and wiggling them back and forth until they're perfectly separated just a tiny pinch of orange zest and some salt then i'll whisk this up with a hand mixer once well combined i'll continue whisking then slowly pour in my chocolate liquid and just like that our lava cakes are ready to fill but first we'll prep our ramekins by covering the inside of each one with butter very generously then going around each one with a paint brush to make sure the butter is well coated now i'll sprinkle just a light amount of sugar on each ramekin then i'll roll this sugar around to make sure it evenly coats all of the butter this will make sure that the lava cakes cook really well and don't stick to the edges of the ramekins you should end up with a really nice even coating and doing this just so happens to be one of the most satisfying things ever now i'll fill each of my ramekins almost all the way lightly tap them down and they're now ready to bake these will bake at about 12 minutes at 425 fahrenheit or about 220 degrees celsius notice i'm also baking them on an upside down sheet tray which will allow for more airflow under them and not burn the bottom of these it's a really good baker's trick look at these bad boys can you see that bubbling on there and how much these amazing lava cakes have climbed up on the edge that my friends is all thanks to that sugar and butter coating along the edge now there are two moment of truths not one when you have a lava cake the first one is actually flipping it over onto your board now i'll slowly wiggle off my ramekin and there it is step one could not have gone better i'll do the same with my second one just slowly wiggling up the ramekin and looking at the beauty that we get lava cakes are complete without a nice dusting of confectioners sugar on top it just makes it really clean now i'll cut it open and we get our second moment of truth look at that lava i really don't think there's anything prettier than this for me as a chef the simple fact that this can come from this is always a fascination you can see we have more than enough lava in here to eat and again if you want to cook yours for less than 12 minutes great i will totally admit that frankly i actually like using just regular bittersweet chocolate than using cacao nibs to make a lava cake so if you're gonna make this recipe i would highly recommend using six ounces of bittersweet chocolate as opposed to cacao nibs to make this but with that said i'm hoping that this has a flavor that's much more in touch with the traditional flavor of chocolate as opposed to a lava cake you might have had at some place like domino's which may be great but it's like having hershey's chocolate as opposed to a delicious single origin chocolate bar i think it's time that i take away the cacao pod and replace it with a nice scoop of homemade cookie butter sweet cream ice cream i made this last night with a custard ice cream base then let it freeze overnight and just let it soften a little bit because i like my ice cream a bit soft now let's get a bite perhaps just topped off with a few more of our cacao nibs here we go i'm sorry for sure i am but that's good it has that really rich flavor from the cacao that i thought we would get it's much more natural it's like going from milk chocolate to dark chocolate for the first time but i love it lately i've become so appreciative and in touch with my food and this opens up entire new flavors that you can try and love sometimes you have to learn to appreciate them but this is one of those things that is absolutely stunning to try again it has that nice crust of a brownie a little bit of confectioners sugar for that light pillowy touch at the top of the bite and then this amazing smooth chocolate river that flows out of it and with that homemade sweet cream cookie ice cream it's just insane so far it does seem like the cacao series is everybody's favorite and it's mine as well so i'm gonna keep making crazy things with these cacao pods that by the way i get from ecuador every single time please like comment subscribe and thank you thank you thank you as always for watching don't forget to subscribe again and turn on notifications because you don't want to miss these videos when they come out i got a few lava cakes to finish

Channel: Nick DiGiovanni

Views: 1,911,821

Keywords: chocolate cake, chocolate, chocolate cake recipe, cake recipe, chocolate recipe, lava cake, lava cake recipe, chocolate lava, chocolate lava cake, choco lava cupcake, cacao pod, cacao pod to chocolate, cacao tree, cacao cake, food, recipes, best cake recipes, homemade food, Nick DiGiovanni, Cooking, Food, Chef, Recipe, Gordon Ramsay, Kitchen, ASMR, MasterChef, Osmo Salt, Salt Bae, Learn To Cook, Knife Drop, Cookbook, Kid-Friendly, Kid’s Recipes, Kid’s Cooking

Id: VVss9lDGX4s

Length: 8min 34sec (514 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 17 2021