Tuesdays With Dorie - Gooey Chocolate Cakes

I was so happy to learn that my very first Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, chosen by Leigh of Lemon Tartlet, was Gooey Chocolate Cakes. When I first browsed Baking From My Home To Yours it was one of the recipes that caught my eye, or made my stomach growl but that’s pretty much the same thing. So I couldn’t wait to make these beauties.

On Sunday morning, I got all my ingredients ready and waited for it to be an acceptable time to make chocolate cake. Eleven AM sounded about right so after making a few sandwiches for lunch, I got started on my cakes. The batter part was fairly straight forward, kind of like making brownies, but better. As I slowly added all the melted chocolate, the batter got darker and gooier and even more delicious than I could have imagined. I filled buttered and floured muffin pans with the silky batter, sprinkled the tops with more chocolate, and into the stove it all went.

I promise you the aroma of the cakes baking into dark little treasures was by itself worth making these. The most stressful part for me was the unmolding of the cakes. I was afraid that half the cakes would remain stuck to the muffin tins. But all the cakes unmolded perfectly into little mounds of chocolate heaven. Heaven. Truly.

As Dorie advises, you do have to use the best quality chocolate you can find and also the one you most like to eat as the taste of the chocolate is what really comes out. I loved tasting the different textures within the cake and with a dollop of whipped cream, I thought they were perfect. Don’t forget to check out what the other Tuesdays with Dorie members thought about the cakes. I can’t wait for next Tuesday!

Gooey Chocolate Cakes
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 ounces bittersweet chocolate,
4 ounces coarsely chopped,
1 ounce very finely chopped
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 large egg yolk, at room temperature
6 tablespoons of sugar

Getting ready: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. butter (or spray – it’s easier) 6 cups of a regular-size muffin pan, preferably a disposable aluminum foil pan, dust the insides with flour and tap out the excess. Put the muffin pan on a baking sheet.

Sift the flour, cocoa and salt together.

Set a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of gently simmering water, put the coarsely chopped chocolate and the butter in the bowl and stir occasionally over the simmering water just until they are melted – you don’t want them to get so hot that the butter separates. Remove the bowl from the pan of water.

In a large bowl, whisk the eggs and yolk until homogenous. Add the sugar and whisk until well blended, about 2 minutes. Add the dry ingredients and, still using the whisk, stir (don’t beat) them into the eggs. Little by little, and using a light hand, stir in the melted chocolate and butter. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups and sprinkle the finely chopped chocolate over the batter.

Bake the cakes for 13 minutes. Transfer them, still on the baking sheet, to a rack to cool for 3 minutes. (There is no way to test that these cakes are properly baked, because the inside remains liquid.)

Line a cutting board with a silicone baking mat or parchment or wax paper, and, after the 3-minute rest, unmold the cakes onto the board. Use a wide metal spatula to lift the cakes onto dessert plates.