Easy Chocolate Lava cake Recipe - The Simpler Kitchen (2024)

Serious about chocolate desserts? Then this easy Chocolate Lava Cake recipe is going to blow you away. They’re wonderfully chocolatey and melt in your mouth. A cross between a souffle and a cake these individual little puddings are simple to make, look impressive and cook in just 12 minutes.

These innocent-looking puddings make a special treat. They are a gift to the world of chocolate puddings and desserts. Break into the sponge-like exterior, and inside you will find a pool of the most delicious chocolate fondant. This delicious, molten centre is how it got its name of lava cake. It does have other names, such as Molten chocolate pudding and melting chocolate pudding, chocolate molten lava cakes. But, whatever you wish to call them if you’re a chocolate lover you should try these at least once.

Have I mentioned how easy they are to make?

Ingredients

The precise ingredients and the exact amounts are listed in the recipe below. These are just a few extra notes to help.

• chocolate – use dark chocolate with at least 75% cocoa solids to achieve the deepest chocolate flavours.
• cocoa – this is added to increase the chocolate flavour even more. Don’t substitute drinking chocolate as that may contain added sugar and milk powder which will upset the balance of flavours in the recipe.
• eggs – these give the spongy outside its lightness. Use large eggs and use at room temperature for the best results.
• plain flour – also known as all-purpose four.
• sugar – as this is a sponge, cater sugar will give you the best results.
• butter – this may be substituted for a non-dairy margarine and is just as successful. The flavour may differ slightly but these delicious chocolate molten lava cakes are so good I suspect you won’t even notice the difference.
• vanilla extract – for the best flavour always use an ‘extract’ in your baking not an essence. This acts as a flavour enhancer in this recipe.

Making the Easy Chocolate Lava Cake

This is a doddle, just follow the instructions below. Chocolate lava cakes are incredibly simple, there are no complicated processes to master and very quickly you’ll have an impressive-looking dessert.

Line the ramekin dishes

These little puddings can be made in ramekins or in a muffin tin.

• Bake in ramekin dishes
  • Butter or oil the sides and base of the ramekins and use little rounds of baking parchment paper to fit the bases to be confident of safely removing the puddings from the dish once they’re cooked. Draw around the bases of the ramekin dishes to make a template.
  • Fill the ramekins with the mixture to just below the inside lip of the dish.
• Bake in a muffin tin
  • butter or oil the cups of the muffin tin. Silicone moulds are brilliant for this. Fill the muffin cups with the mixture to 3/4 full. As the cakes will be smaller bake them for between 8 to ten minutes. The top should be firm but the centres should still appear soft and squidgy.

How do I know that the Chocolate Lava Cakes are done?

The whole thing about Chocolate Lava Cakes is that they have a pool of liquid chocolate sauce that flows out once you cut into it. Lava, like a volcano, get it? So, judging ‘doneness’ is a little different from deciding when a sponge cake is done. With these molten chocolate puddings, you just need the tops to be firm. At the end of the baking time, you want the tops to look firm. Inside needs to be soft and slightly squidgy.

Alternatives to this Chocolate Lava Cake Recipe

It is quite easy to turn this recipe into a Chocolate Orange Lava Cake. It just requires the addition of the orange flavours.

To make a Chocolate Orange Lava Cake, add a little orange zest and a 1/2 teaspoon of orange extract flavouring. The puddings will still look dark and chocolatey but they will also taste beautifully of orange just like famous chocolate oranges.

Serving Chocolate Lava Cake Dessert

We eat these delicious chocolate puddings at weekends or when friends come over to eat. They feel and look quite special even though they don’t take a ton of time and they’re pretty easy to make.

As always there are quite a few options. These are a few of our ideas to get you started.

• Dust with icing sugar for a really simple presentation.
• Single Cream – dairy or non-dairy types. The contrast in the colours looks really pretty too.
• Add a few berries – strawberries and raspberries go really well with these flavours.
• Ice Cream – a plain vanilla ice cream is delicious. It melts beautifully into the chocolate sauce that spills from inside the pudding.
• Yoghurt – plain or flavoured Greek-style yoghurts go really well.

Storing Easy Chocolate Lava Cakes

These Chocolate Lava Cakes are at their absolute best when eaten fresh from the oven. So, what do you do if you need to store these little puddings?

• Unbaked mixture – Store the unbaked mixture in the fridge for up to a day and bake when you’re are ready to eat them warm from the oven.
  • Freeze the uncooked mixture in the ramekin dishes and bake from frozen for 16 minutes.
• Baked Puddings These will last for 2 days in the fridge but benefit from warming in the microwave ( a 30-second blast of heat) or oven for 5 minutes to restore the delicious, squidgy centres.

Your turn – What kind of pudding recipes would like to see here? Quick? Traditional? or just plain indulgent? Tell me in the comments and I’ll see what I can do.

If you try and enjoy these puddings I’d love to know. Did you make them as part of a celebration or just because you’re a chocolate lover? If you’ve any photo’s I’d love to see how you got on…

If you like this then you make like some of our other recipes

• Banana Loaf Cake
• Easy and Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins
• Easy Vegan Blueberry Muffins
• How to make Chocolate Orange Brownies
• Soft and Chewy Oat and Raisin Cookies
• Rice Pudding with Coconut Milk
• Castella Cake
• Banana and Date Loaf Cake
• Rock Cakes
• Blueberry Crumble
• Blueberry Orange Muffins
• Double Chocolate Chip Muffins

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