Chocolate Molten Lava Cakes

YEAH… so I was a little bad over the weekend… I had a craving for CHOCLATE, so what better than the chocolatey-est of the chocolatey—LAVA CAKES.  Like I said, I try to be healthy, but there’s no point in killing yourself with a completely healthy diet all the time—REWARD yourself once in a while!

Choclate Molten Lava Cakes

Ingredients:

4 Squares Baker’s semi-sweet baking chocolate

½ cup (one stick) butter

1 cup powdered sugar

2 eggs

2 egg yolks

6 tbsp. flour

½ cup thawed cool whip topping

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Butter  4 (oven proof) custard cups or soufflé dishes. Place on baking sheet.  Microwave chocolate and butter in large microwavable bowl on HIGH for 1 min or until butter is melted.

Stir with wire whisk or until chocolate is melted.  Stir in sugar until blended.

Blend in eggs and egg yolks with wire whisk.

Make sure when separating the yolks, that you DON'T break them! Its SUPER hard to fish all of the yolk out of the whites.  Also a good trick... USE the leftover egg parts (whites in this example) for breakfast the next morning!! YUMM

Stir in flour. Divide batter between prepared custard cups.

Bake 13-14 min or until sides are firm but centers are soft and gooey. Let stand one minute and then run a knife around the outside of the cakes to loosen them from the custard cups.  Invert the cakes into a bowl or plate and serve immediately while the centers are still hot and oozy with ice cream & chocolate syrup or cool whip topping. 

Enjoy your FOOD COMA :)

 

**The great thing about this dessert is that it definitely satisfies that chocolate fix! They’re so easy that you can just whip them up in no time, and you can even prepare them a day ahead: just prepare the batter, put in custard cups, saran wrap, and place in refrigerator.  Then just bake as directed. This recipe originally came from a Food & Family Kraft magazine... They really have some great stuff in them! I've found many of my favorites there!  

Chocolate Eclair Cake

Funny story about this dessert: I actually made this as a “How to” speech during high school.  I really felt like a Food Network Star up there!  And to prove how fast I whipped this baby up… the speech had to be no longer than 5-6 minutes J Yep, needless to say I was the favorite in my speech class for a couple of days.

Chocolate Éclair Cake

Ingredients:

3 small boxes of instant vanilla pudding

3 cups milk**

One 8 oz container Cool Whip **

1 Box graham crackers

1 can of chocolate frosting

Directions:

Mix pudding and milk until creamy.  Blend in Cool Whip.  In an 11x13 pan, place a layer of graham crackers then a layer of the Cool Whip pudding mixture.  Repeat another layer  and then finish by placing one last layer of graham crackers (3 layers graham crackers, 2 layers pudding mixture), and ice with frosting.  Cover and Refrigerate. 

**Because I figure that I might as well avoid extra calories when possible, I use skim milk and fat free Cool Whip.  Overall, this dish is relatively low calorie, and it’s very rich so a huge piece isn’t even necessary to fill that chocolate craving.  It’s kind of a cool twist on a smore kind of taste, so kids and adults will all rave over this dessert.  This dessert is best when chilled overnight because the pudding-y goodness has time to soak into the graham crackers.  SO EASY, SO DELICIOUS!!! Great for a summer pitch-in or last minute company!