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I’m continuing my quest to cook a recipe from every episode of Good Eats, and I’ve made it to Episode 6, an episode all about chocolate. There are two recipes in this episode, a chocolate mousse, and a chocolate lava muffin. This is a really neat recipe, it’s kind of a combination of a chocolate lava cake and a brownie. The end result is delicious, and they aren’t super hard to make.
In terms of special equipment, you need to fashion yourself a double boiler. Basically that just means you need a metal bowl. I use this set from Amazon, they’re awesome at everything and they nest together so they don’t take up much space in the cabinet. Just pop the largest bowl on top of a pan with about an inch of water in it and bring the water to a simmer.
I also used a hand mixer for this. Specifically this kitchenaid hand mixer. I’m sure the stand mixer would have been fine too, but a pretty integral part of this recipe is incorporating air into the batter, and Alton Brown used a hand mixer to do it, so I did too.
As long as you have those two things, this recipe comes together pretty fast. You put the dry goods in a bowl and set aside. Ava REALLY likes the way flour feels. I don’t question it.
Next, you melt the chocolate in the double boiler along with a stick of butter. Keep stirring until everything is very smooth.
Then grab a sifter and sift the dry mixture into the wet mixture, constantly mixing to keep clumps from forming. Go a little bit at a time and don’t add the next dose until the last dose is totally incorporated.
Once all the dry stuff is in, incorporate the eggs in the same manner. One at a time, letting it fully mix in before you drop the next one in. Daisy was in charge of all the action shots here btw.
After the eggs are all in, turn the mixer up to high and beat the crap out of it. You’re trying to whip in a bunch of air, and you can actually see it change color and get lighter as the batter takes on more and more air. Pretty cool!
At this point, the instructions say to pop the batter in the fridge while you prep the pan, and that’s precisely what I did.
The muffin tin gets throughly buttered, not just the cups but the top surfaces too, then sprinkled with a healthy dose of cocoa powder. This will add flavor and prevent sticking. I honestly didn’t think I did a great job, but it ended up working well, so I guess I did, lol.
There’s nothing really left to do at this point but dose up the batter. As you can see I wasn’t super precise and ended up with a couple of smaller ones.
While the muffins were in the oven, I threw together the sauce. It’s just vanilla ice cream with some expresso powder. It IS tasty as hell though.
The instructions say to bake for 10-11 minutes. I set the timer for 5, rotated, and then 5 more. They still looked a little flat, so I let them go for another 2-3 minutes and that ended up being perfect in my oven. Cake-like on the outside, and still soft and jiggly at the middle.
As the muffins cool a little bit, they do deflate, so don’t let it freak you out.
Now time to devour. The muffins are good to me either or without the sauce. Daisy really liked the sauce a lot, but she’s a coffee addict so that makes perfect sense. I’m more into the chocolate, and these definitely hit the spot. Cake-like on the outside and soft and gooey in the middle. They’re just as good, maybe even better the next day. They set up a bit more but the middle stays very moist. I’ll put it like this, they didn’t last very long in our house, and we usually don’t eat a ton of sweets and try to avoid buying sugary stuff. Then again, maybe that’s WHY they didn’t last long. Anyway, enough of my rambling, here’s some pictures.
I will DEFINITELY be making this recipe again. And you should make it right now. Here’s the original recipe.
