Fabulous Friday Food - Molten Chocolate Cakes

I know, I know, Valentine's Day has come and gone, but I still have to share with you the dessert we made that night. It's one of our favorites because it seems a little fancy, but it's oh-so-delicious. And perfect for Valentine's Day.

So, since it's still technically February and I'm still in love (tee hee!), I thought I'd share our Valentine's Day dessert with you.

I'll be honest--it's Giada's recipe. So if you want to just use that, you are more than welcome to go there and print it off. I don't use the liqueur or the berries, so I guess you could say that mine is a variation.

And if you've ever thought that making Molten Chocolate Cake is just too hard, think again. It's not. It's a little more involved than, say, making a cake from a box mix, but not too much more. The key is in the beating of the eggs. If you can beat eggs, you can do this.

Here we go. Assemble your ingredients (don't I say that every week?): Butter, flour, sugar, chocolate, eggs, and coffee. Super-basic, don't you think?

Chop up the chocolate.

Melt the chocolate and butter and instant coffee over a double boiler, but don't let it get too hot.

Here's my helper mixing the chocolate and butter.

Butter and flour the ramekins--the full recipe will make about 8 individual cakes (we only made four on Valentine's Day and made the rest the next day).

Put the egg yolks and eggs in a mixing bowl. Room temperature eggs work best.

Add the sugar.

And beat the heck out of it. Really. I mean, like, beat it for a few minutes until the mixture is nice and thick.

Add the melted chocolate and butter once it's cooled a bit (you don't want to scramble the eggs).

Add the flour. (It's crazy, but this recipe only takes 4 teaspoons of flour!)

Pour into ramekins.

Mmmmm. I could dive in right now, but you have to bake these beauties for 8-10 minutes.

Now, the tricky part, of course, is turning the cakes out of the ramekins. Which I can never do like they do in a restaurant. What can I say? It's my one cooking weakness.

But we've come up with a happy solution in our family . . . don't turn them over. Just serve them in the ramekin.

With a dollop of fresh whipped cream, of course.

If you want the printable version of my take on Giada's recipe, you can click here.

Have a great weekend!