Spiced Caramel Chocolate Lava Cakes
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It’s Valentine’s Day Weekend and that means really only one thing in the food world—chocolate. I took a poll on my Instagram stories at the beginning of the week asking if people preferred chocolate desserts or pink desserts and I truly don’t even know why I asked. Chocolate is always the winner. My perfect Valentine’s dessert (or honestly anytime dessert) is very simple, very rich, very gooey, and often salted. So basically, little lava cakes.
Back about 7 years ago or so, I pinned a recipe on Pinterest for molten cakes baked in muffin tins. It was from a very random blog, with a poor, artificially lit photo (one that would never stand on my carefully curated Pinterest boards of today!), and my sister-in-law decided to try out the recipe. They were a hit. We made them for party desserts. We made them for my other sister-in-law’s freezer when she had her first baby. I took them on road trips. We just became best friends. And then, like Jessie and her little girl owner in Toy Story 2, we grew apart. Other flashy recipes caught my attention. I started laminating doughs and layering cakes and going to pastry school. Fast forward to about a year ago, I had a craving for lava cakes and set out to sort through thousands of pins to find the recipe, and it was gone! Of course, I had never written the recipe down, so I set out to make my own perfect little molten lava cake recipe and here we are. These lava cakes are the product of lots of testing, lots of suffering through too dry or not-cooked-enough cakes, but we made it friends.
about the spiced caramel
You guys know I can’t just give you a normal, caramel lava cake recipe. It’s against my nature! So here, we spice our caramel with fennel seeds, cardamom pods, and black peppercorns. The spices give a little added flavor contrast to the chocolate and help to cut through some of the sweetness. It’s made using a traditional wet caramel, meaning sugar is cooked with water (which helps prevent that pesky sugar crystallization) until it turns a deep amber color. Heavy cream that has been steeped with your spices gets added, followed by butter and salt. Make sure to chill the caramel well, so that it’s scoop-able when filling the cakes or it will ooze out the sides during baking!
about the lava cakes
The actual cakes themselves are fairly straightforward here. All of your favorite ingredients make an appearance- flour, sugar, brown sugar, butter, eggs, and chocolate. The cakes get baked in muffin tins and the batter can be actually be chilled and baked off later if you want to make them ahead. You can also freeze and wrap baked cakes individually and heat them in the microwave, although you do lose a little of that molten middle. Still chocolate-y and still delicious. They are really the most perfect Valentine’s day treat.
Spiced Caramel Chocolate Lava Cakes
Ingredients
- ½ cup (100 g) granulated sugar
- 2 tbsp water
- ½ tsp lemon juice
- ¼ cup heavy cream
- ¼ tsp fennel seeds, roughly chopped
- 8 whole cardamom pods
- ½ tsp black peppercorns
- 1 tbsp unsalted butter
- pinch of salt
- 3 oz + 2 tbsp unsalted butter, divided
- 6 oz dark chocolate, roughly chopped
- 1 egg
- 3 egg yolks
- ¼ cup (50 g) granulated sugar
- ¼ cup (60 g) brown sugar
- 3 tbsp all purpose flour
- 2 ½ tsp cocoa powder, divided
- ¼ tsp kosher salt
- ¼ tsp vanilla extract
- spiced caramel, recipe included, chilled
Instructions
- Place heavy cream, fennel seeds, cardamom pods, and black peppercorns in a small saucepan set over medium heat. Bring to a simmer and then immediately remove from heat. Cover and let steep for 30 minutes. Strain out the spices and set cream aside.
- In a medium pot, stir together sugar, water, and lemon juice. Set over medium heat and cook without stirring until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture begins to take on a light brown color. At this point, you can gently stir the caramel. Continue to cook until the caramel reaches a deep amber color.
- Remove the caramel from the heat and whisk in the reserved heavy cream. (The mixture will bubble up, this is okay, just keep stirring). When all the cream has been added, return it to the heat and cook for one more minute.
- Remove from the heat again, stir in butter and a pinch of salt and then transfer to a clean bowl to cool.
- Store caramel in an air-tight container in the fridge for up to a week.
- Preheat the oven to 425° F. Melt 2 tbsp of butter and divide between six muffin tins. Sprinkle 1 ½ tsp of the cocoa among the six muffin tins and use your fingers to mix the butter and cocoa powder and rub the mixture thoroughly up the sides of the tins to prevent sticking.
- In a heat-proof bowl set over a pot of simmering water, melt the chocolate. Set aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, add 3 oz of butter, sugar, and granulated sugar. Cream for 2-3 minutes, until light and fluffy, scraping down the sides as needed.
- With the mixer on low speed, add eggs and egg yolks one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add the vanilla extract.
- Add the flour, remaining 1 tsp of cocoa powder, and salt and mix on low speed until just combined. Stream in the melted chocolate and continue to mix for 1-2 minutes until homogenous. Remove the bowl from the mixer, scrape down the sides, and fold with a rubber spatula to ensure that the batter is evenly mixed.
- Use a 2 ½ tbsp cookie scoop and place one scoop of batter in each of the prepared muffin tins. Place one teaspoon of cold caramel in the center of the batter, and then top each with another 2 ½ tbsp scoop of batter. Tap the pan gently once or twice to settle the batter.
- Bake for 8-9 minutes and then let cool for 10 minutes in the pan. Invert and serve immediately with ice cream and more caramel sauce.
- Leftover lava cakes can be wrapped tightly in plastic wrap and frozen. To reheat, remove from the plastic and microwave from frozen for 30-45 seconds, until warmed through.
