Originally published on kosher.com.
At the Center for Kosher Culinary Arts, close attention is paid to the science of baking. Questions come up often regarding how and why we bake certain things at specific temperatures, and whether it makes a difference if one uses different kinds of materials for baking, such as metal or ceramic baking pans. There are always very precise answers to these questions. Baking is, in fact, a more exact science than cooking, because the raw materials you use in baking react with one another on a chemical level to create something entirely new.
In regard to special desserts like Molten Chocolate Lava Cake and its cookie dough cousin, Molten Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake, baking time and baking pans become even more important than with your everyday cakes and cookies. If you bake a molten cake too long, you will end up with boring everyday cake, and if you bake it not long enough, the gooey goodness you were going for turns out to be a little too ... well, gooey.
First, some good news: After numerous tests, I can confirm that for the modern Jewish home's parve dessert needs, unsalted margarine and butter work equally well in molten cakes, so you can happily use a one to one butter to margarine conversion ratio for any molten cake recipes you find that call for butter.
With parve issues out of the way, here are the three important factors to consider when making molten cakes: Temperature, time, and baking tins.
1. Temperature is the one item that most affects the ooey-gooey factor in molten cakes. Once a molten cake is baked, it's either right or it isn't, so we'll do all we can to make sure you get the temperature right the first time. If the recipe does not call for you to chill the dough before baking, then the oven temperature would most likely be relatively low, like 325 or 350 degrees F. For the recipe I am going to recommend, especially the Molten Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake, I prefer using chilled dough, and a hot, 400 degree F oven, because the cold fat in the dough hits the hot oven and immediately starts baking the cake from the outside in. This is what you want: A cakey crispness outside, with a barely done, melted chocolate-y center.
2. A number of things affect how much time a cake spends in the oven. Is there a rising agent in the batter, like baking soda? Are you looking to make what is essentially a dark chocolate soufflé pudding cake with lots of eggs and egg yolk, like Molten Chocolate Lava cake? The time a cake spends in the oven should be the shortest time necessary to get the product formed, but long enough to no longer be raw. With molten cakes, it tends to be 10-15 minutes, but you have to watch it carefully. A minute too long can cause the product to overbake. It's a good idea to have a little extra batter around the first time you make this. I recommend doing a test run before you put all your batter in the oven, so you can experiment without fear. Small batches are best with molten cakes anyway, because too much cold batter going into the oven will bring the oven's overall temperature down and then the oven will require extra time to recover to its original temperature.
3. The kind of baking tins you choose will also affect the outcome of molten cakes. Most often, chefs will recommend you bake molten cakes in ramekins, which are small glazed ceramic bowls that are perfect for individual portions. Ramekins are generally reliable in that the ceramic allows for very even cooking, because the air in the oven can swirl around the ramekin and quickly bake the outside of the cake while leaving the center gooey. However, ramekins have drawbacks too: First, they sometime cook their contents too fast, so some recipes recommend placing the batter with the ramekins inside another pan with water (a bain marie or water bath), to slow the cooking. Second, they are expensive, have to be individually cleaned, and not everyone has a set of ramekins ready to prepare dessert for a whole family. For this reason, I have a recipe I can recommend using baking tins that everyone has or can get easily: Disposable cupcake tins. That's right! It works perfectly as long as you have the temperature and time right.
So now that you know what to watch for, I am happy to share two recipes for Molten Cakes. Remember to do a test run in your oven first to make sure you have the time and temperature correct. Ovens do sometimes run hot or cold, and if you don't get good results with these times and temperatures, it is possible that the temperature reading outside the oven does not adequately reflect the temperature inside. If this is the case, it's a good idea to use a thermometer you can put in the oven to test the temperature.
Click below for the two molten recipes provided along with this article:
Molten Chocolate Lava Cake
Molten Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake
