Chrissy Makes Chocolate Lava Cake

This is a classy lava cake.

This isn't no Domino's lava cake.

This is like homemade made, made with love from scratch.

Doesn't get better than that.

[upbeat music]

I have got the most delectable

lava cake recipe coming at you.

It's simple, it's fun.

It kind of had to take from like, I don't know,

just my experience with vegan baking

and techniques I had learned from different bloggers

and kind of bring that all together

to create my own lava cake.

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So the first thing we've gotta do

is just butter these up 'cause we want as little

of the lava cake to stick to the ramekins as possible.

Not very civilized.

I just, I like to use my hands for everything when cooking,

so that's what I do.

So I am just using some Flora Foods plant butter,

which is really good.

It's unsalted.

After you go in with your butter,

you're just gonna go in with the cocoa powder as well.

I kind of just do this method of like knocking the ramekin

against my hand to spread that cocoa powder evenly.

And you can leave the extra in there or you can tap it out.

It's whatever you want.

You just want an extra dry agent that will make it easier

for your lava cakes to come out of the ramekin itself.

It's looking pretty good to me.

So we're just gonna stop right there

and now we can set these bad boys aside.

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So the next thing we're gonna do is prepare

a vegan ganache filling.

Typically ganache, you know, is made

with chocolate and milk and other non vegan ingredients.

So we had to find a way to make a delicious ganache

with omitting dairy.

We have maple syrup.

We actually went out and

and got the maple sap from the trees out, back in the yard.

Found a nice little grove in the side of our property

this year, which was really awesome.

Tapped about 10 trees and we've been able to produce

quite a bit of maple syrup this year,

which has been super rewarding.

It's very labor-intensive, but very worth it

because now we have maple syrup to have throughout the year.

We've also have refined coconut oil

and it's very important to use refined coconut oil

for this recipe, because it has a very neutral flavor.

It doesn't taste like coconut, like you might expect.

And then it also will harden in the fridge

and then become this ooey gooey melty center

for the lava cake during baking.

And last but not least, we're gonna add cocoa powder.

And I'm just gonna kind of go in there

and break up that coconut oil a little bit.

And you'll see that it's gonna just kind of

mend together with that maple syrup.

It almost looks like thick brownie batter.

And so, you know it's ready

when you've gotten that consistency.

I'm just gonna pop this in the freezer to set

while we move on to the next step in the process.

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Here, we've got a small pot and a small mixing bowl.

As you can see the lip of the mixing bowl

kind of just rest gently on the edge of the pot

and below that we've got about a half inch of water.

The most important thing with double boiling

is you want to make sure that no matter what,

the water is not making contact with the mixing bowl,

and I've got the temperature at low heat right now.

I'm just gonna turn it up a little bit, medium low

and we've got our chopped sliver chocolate.

Baker's brand of semi-sweet chocolate is actually vegan.

Our pot is now giving off a really nice steam.

I'm just gonna go ahead and add the chocolate

as well as the butter and I'm just gonna

break that up a little bit, give it a good stir.

I think it's nice to use a rubber spatula

when you are doing this

because you're able to really pull the chocolate

and kind of just bring it all back in together.

As you can see, the chocolate's already melting.

Butter's taking a close second.

We want this to be a very smooth, runny consistency,

and all of the pieces of chocolate and butter

are fully immersed into this nice kind of like,

silky chocolate mixture.

So I turned off the heat now and we can move on

to the next part, which is building out our batter

for the lava cake.

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We've got what I call magic bean juice here.

It's called, aquafaba.

Talked about it before.

I'm talking about it again.

And it's just literally the,

the liquid in a can of chickpeas

which sounds just like not the most appetizing,

but I promise you,

you're not gonna have to worry about it

kind of like messing up the flavor or anything like that.

It is amazing because it leavens and it binds,

just like an egg and that's why

it's important to this recipe

because we want the lava cake to be kind of like

this lifted ooey gooey experience.

We've also have a little bit of apple cider vinegar.

That's just gonna work as an additional leavening agent.

We've got some Madagascar vanilla here, vanilla extract.

That'll add just a really nice, subtle hint

of vanilla to the recipe and a little bit of kosher salt.

This is just organic cane sugar.

Interesting fact, a lot of sugar is actually processed

with animal bone char.

So that's how you get a lot of the white sugar.

As you can see, this is more tan in color.

It hasn't been processed with animal bone char

'cause it's literally just to make the sugar white.

Most people would use like an electric beater

at this point in time, but not we're, we're going manual.

We're doing the, we're doing the work.

So I'm just gonna go ahead and start whipping this up

and you can see it's already starting to get foamy.

Again, this is important for making sure

that the lava cakes are leavened and can bind well.

You wanna see it kind of get this consistent foaminess

and less of those larger air bubbles.

So I had to really adjust the aquafaba, the butter,

the chocolate, and get it just right to make sure

that you could get all the elements that a lava cake needs,

but still not compromise on the flavor at all.

We have our aquafaba mix, AKA our wet mixture,

that is the perfect consistency that we're looking for.

Minimal air bubbles and just nice thick and foamy.

So now we're gonna get started with adding

our dry ingredients and some of the additional flavorings.

I'll start by adding some baking powder.

Then we'll go ahead and add some baking soda.

Again, these are just additional leavening agents.

We don't want our lava cake to fall flat.

That's why it's so important that we get it just right.

And then we have some silk chili powder.

This is actually from Turkey.

Very interesting, very bold, very flavorful.

I always think chili plays very well with dark chocolate.

So in addition to getting, you know,

the sweet notes from this recipe,

you're also gonna get a subtle spice

on the back of the throat.

This is totally optional, but I wouldn't skimp on it.

I think it's very interesting and

and makes the flavor more deep and more robust.

And now we're just gonna add some flour

and we're looking for the consistency to be smooth.

And now I'm just going to add some plant milk.

You can use any milk that you've got.

We're just gonna mix that in.

I like using the Silk oat milk.

I've experimented with almond milk

and oat milk and cashew milk

and they all work the same for the recipe.

And this'll just smooth out that consistency

a little bit more and make it a little bit more runny.

I've removed the chocolate from the double boiler

on the stove, and it's still nice and runny,

which is exactly what we want.

I found that it's best to gently fold in

the chocolate mixture as the last step

so that your batter does not go flat.

I'm just going in with a rubber spatula

because that allows me to get everything

out of the mixing bowl.

This is the part where you could potentially over mix.

We don't want that.

I am just gently folding

until I see that this is one consistent color.

And that's when you know, it's ready.

We're just gonna get right into the ganache

which has already sat in the fridge,

roll those out into balls

and get started with our arranging of our ramekins.

This part is, this part's definitely messy.

You're just gonna get in there.

You're gonna have a little ball of ganache.

You're gonna divide that into two

and you're just gonna ball it in the center of your hand.

Like so, like that.

And you want like these nice circles.

This will be the money shot.

This'll be that melty goodness in the center.

I'm just going to go ahead and divide the batter

into the ramekins.

We're just gonna fill these up, like almost halfway.

You wanna make sure that the ball of ganache

is more staying towards the top of the ramekins.

Because what can happen is if the ganache is too close

to the bottom, you'll lose a lot of that

in the cooking process, and you don't want that to happen.

Kind of got these divided and I'm just lightly tapping.

You can go in with the spatula

just to even it out a little bit

and then we're just gonna put a ball of the ganache

right in the center, right on top

and cover those bad boys up with the remaining batter.

And I'm pretty much just eyeballing, you know, as I go.

We did it.

We, you know, got these into the ramekins in time,

before that batter kind of like seized up

and now we can pop these into the oven,

but it should look like this.

Your batter should come just up to the kind of like,

there's an inner rim lip of the ramekins.

Your batter should kind of stay there.

I put a little bit more in this one.

So it's probably gonna need a little bit more cook time,

but even enough.

And I just gently tap on the table just to

even out the batter and kind of get rid of any air bubbles

that might exist.

Preheat, your oven, 400 degrees.

We're gonna cook these up to 11 minute mark.

Check to see if the edges are browned and crispy.

If they're not, then we're gonna leave it in

for up to 14 minutes.

It really just depends on,

you know, things like your elevation,

the type of oven you have,

but you'll want the indicators are gonna be

darker crispier edges with a softer center.

Let's get these into the oven.

[upbeat music]

All right, all right.

11 minutes has passed by.

We've got our crabby grabbies,

that's what I'm calling these now.

And we're gonna go ahead and check on our,

our lava cakes.

All right, ooh, them bad boys expanded.

So we've got those like browned crispy edges

that I was looking for

and the center should be soft to the touch.

They'll kind of fall a little bit

after they come out of the oven.

If they're a little bit, you know,

if they flow over the top a little bit, no big deal.

Then you can kind of just kind of work that back in

when you go around the edges with the knife.

So we're just gonna let those cool for like,

I don't know, a minute or two,

and then we have the moment of truth,

Will they lava?

I shouldn't look at these for any long, girls.

I might just go in and start eating.

So I'm gonna back away. [laughs]

[beeps] [hands thumping]

The time has come.

I'm gonna run this knife gently along the edges.

Okay.

All the way around.

This is still a little hot but I've,

what I like to call brave hands.

What we're gonna do,

I like to give it a nice little tap

and lava cake, lava cake.

You can see the center already wants to ooze out.

What we're looking for here is a pretty consistent texture

around the edge and just that molten center.

That's the most important part here.

And it's slightly oozing out over the edge of the lava cake.

And once we take our spoon and dig in,

it'll, it'll flow right out,

exactly what we were looking for.

So I'm pretty happy with how this turned out so far.

I'm just gonna add

to a small fine mesh sieve, some powdered sugar.

Oh and it kind of did the job for me,

but what you can just do is lightly tap

to evenly distribute that powdered sugar.

And it looks like a snow covered mountain.

Pretty excited to dig into this.

Oh yeah.

Look at that gooey ganache center.

Oh, it's dripping a lot though.

Mm hm hm.

[upbeat music]

It's so rich and so decadent.

I don't know how else to describe it.

Like it's,

mm.

It's just, it's like gooey and warm and perfect

in so many ways.

I, lots of texture play here.

Taste the really subtle chili notes,

which is super important.

I really wanted that to shine in this dish.

It's quick. It's easy.

Pantry staples,

fun, delicious.

If you've make it drop a comment below,

let me know how it goes and enjoy.

A One.

It's good.

That's really good.

That's it.

That's a wrap.

I have nothing else.

I really don't.