Spiced Caramel Lava Cakes
an oldie but goodie Valentine's Day recipe
I remember the first time I made homemade lava cakes. Travel back with me to 2011, which now as I’m writing this feels like a trillion years ago and yesterday at the exact same time. While we were all tuning in to the first royal wedding and listening to too much Party Rock Anthem, you could find me obsessively pinning recipes to my brand new Pinterest boards. I was already into food blogs—I would check in each day on my “friends” Lindsay at Pinch of Yum and Deb at Smitten Kitchen, keeping a pen and paper list of recipes I saw that I wanted to try. So when Pinterest launched, I was in heaven. I would spend many hours at a little table in the student union at UCF, just pinning away.
One such recipe that I discovered during my Pinterest peak was for molten lava cakes. I made them once for dinner at a friend’s house. And then I made them again. And again. And again. Any event, big or small, I was making lava cakes. And then, I moved on—graduated college, got married, moved across the country a bunch of times, and exploring other desserts. I went to pastry school and worked in restaurants and started laminated doughs and forgot all about my little lava cakes.
A few years ago, they popped into my head seemingly out of nowhere and I set out to scroll through my thousands of pins to find the recipe because of course I had never written it down and came up short. So I set out to create my own recipe—suffering through many a too-dry or not-cooked-enough cakes in the meantime. These lava cakes are perfect and 2011 me would be thrilled that we created a future where we get to make lava cake recipes for a living.
spiced caramel lava cakes
You guys know I can’t just give you a normal, caramel lava cake recipe. It’s against my nature! So here, we spice our caramel with fennel seeds, cardamom pods, and black peppercorns. The spices give a little added flavor contrast to the chocolate and help to cut through some of the sweetness. It’s made using a traditional wet caramel, meaning sugar is cooked with water (which helps prevent that pesky sugar crystallization) until it turns a deep amber color. Heavy cream that has been steeped with your spices gets added, followed by butter and salt. Make sure to chill the caramel well, so that it’s scoop-able when filling the cakes or it will ooze out the sides during baking! You could also omit the spices for a plain caramel, use a thick store-bought caramel, or even play around with a scoop of nutella (which I hypothesize would be delicious).
The actual cakes themselves are fairly straightforward here. All of your favorite ingredients make an appearance- flour, sugar, brown sugar, butter, eggs, and chocolate. The cakes get baked in muffin tins and the batter can actually be chilled and baked off later if you want to make them ahead. You can also freeze and wrap baked cakes individually and heat them in the microwave, although you do lose a little of that molten middle. Still chocolate-y and still delicious. They are really the most perfect Valentine’s day treat.
spiced caramel lava cakes
makes six lava cakes
Ingredients:
for the spiced caramel
½ cup (100 g) granulated sugar
2 tbsp water
½ tsp lemon juice
¼ cup heavy cream
¼ tsp fennel seeds, roughly chopped
8 whole cardamom pods
½ tsp black peppercorns
1 tbsp unsalted butter
pinch of salt
for the lava cakes
3 oz + 2 tbsp unsalted butter, divided
6 oz dark chocolate, roughly chopped
1 egg
3 egg yolks
¼ cup (50 g) granulated sugar
¼ cup (60 g) brown sugar
3 tbsp all purpose flour
2 ½ tsp cocoa powder, divided
¼ tsp kosher salt
¼ tsp vanilla extract
spiced caramel, recipe included, chilled
Procedure:
to make the spiced caramel
Place heavy cream, fennel seeds, cardamom pods, and black peppercorns in a small saucepan set over medium heat. Bring to a simmer and then immediately remove from heat. Cover and let steep for 30 minutes. Strain out the spices and set cream aside.
In a medium pot, stir together sugar, water, and lemon juice. Set over medium heat and cook without stirring until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture begins to take on a light brown color. At this point, you can gently stir the caramel. Continue to cook until the caramel reaches a deep amber color.
Remove the caramel from the heat and whisk in the reserved heavy cream. (The mixture will bubble up, this is okay, just keep stirring). When all the cream has been added, return it to the heat and cook for one more minute.
Remove from the heat again, stir in butter and a pinch of salt and then transfer to a clean bowl to cool.
Store caramel in an air-tight container in the fridge for up to a week.
to make the lava cakes
Preheat the oven to 425° F. Melt 2 tbsp of butter and divide between six muffin tins. Sprinkle 1 ½ tsp of the cocoa among the six muffin tins and use your fingers to mix the butter and cocoa powder and rub the mixture thoroughly up the sides of the tins to prevent sticking.
In a heat-proof bowl set over a pot of simmering water, melt the chocolate. Set aside.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, add 3 oz of butter, sugar, and granulated sugar. Cream for 2-3 minutes, until light and fluffy, scraping down the sides as needed.
With the mixer on low speed, add eggs and egg yolks one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add the vanilla extract.
Add the flour, remaining 1 tsp of cocoa powder, and salt and mix on low speed until just combined. Stream in the melted chocolate and continue to mix for 1-2 minutes until homogenous. Remove the bowl from the mixer, scrape down the sides, and fold with a rubber spatula to ensure that the batter is evenly mixed.
Use a 2 ½ tbsp cookie scoop and place one scoop of batter in each of the prepared muffin tins. Place one teaspoon of cold caramel in the center of the batter, and then top each with another 2 ½ tbsp scoop of batter. Tap the pan gently once or twice to settle the batter.
Bake for 8-9 minutes and then let cool for 10 minutes in the pan. Invert and serve immediately with ice cream and more caramel sauce.
Leftover lava cakes can be wrapped tightly in plastic wrap and frozen. To reheat, remove from the plastic and microwave from frozen for 30-45 seconds, until warmed through.