Tuesdays With Dorie: 2 of 11

Sunday is the day I typically bake ( funny, I said “typically”) Ok, Sunday is the day that if I were to bake, it would likely happen then. This week the chosen recipe from TWD is Gooey Chocolate Cakes.

So Sunday evening I was just to the stage where you had to stir in the dry ingredients and then carefully add the chocolate mixture when the doorbell rings, and chaos insues for the next half hour. Visitors, tasters, all showing up and the dogs going bonkers – they love company.

I had friends coming to share my dessert, then another friend came to check out my basement finishing – in progress. He raised all sorts of questions about the structural integrity and potential code violations and left my nerves rather jangly. chocolate - the perfect antidote! BTW -I spoke to the contractor the Monday and he allayed my fears by either agreeing to fix some things or explaining why the way he did them is ok – very patient man, ‘cause I’m a little anxious about this thing. (Sometimes I wonder why I had to mess with a good thing. The house has been standing steady for 99 years, why at the dawn of it’s 100 birthday did I decide to remove a structural wall? Sheeesh...)

Anyway, because of all the activity, I forgot to take photos. But, I’ll just tell you that the gooey chocolate cakes were a hit. Rich and chocolatey...and gooey. Served with a little French vanilla ice cream - scrumpdillyiscious! There was one left that I happened to eat tonight, so I remembered to take a picture before I finished it off (see above - lousy photo, but it's all I've got). It didn’t have that oozy goo that was came out Sunday because it had been refrigerated and reheated. As Dorie describes, it was more like a bon bon with a firmer outside and a soft middle. It was still scrumptious.

Dorie recommends you put the batter in a disposable aluminum muffin tin – I went ahead and used ramekins because I wasn’t sure how many folks would show up for the tasting and I was going to freeze the batter of the excess cakes. As it turned out, the recipe only made enough for 4 ramekins,¾ c sized ramekins, smallish ramekins, only 4. Not sure how that happened, because it was supposed to fill 6. Regardless there was plenty to go around, none were frozen, and there’s one left for my dessert tonight.
As a slight variation, I used 2 oz of chocolate infused with pasilla chili and cayanne pepper. It had just a hint of chili spice in the cake and was wonderful.
















next week's recipe:

Mary of Starting From Scratch has chosen…

The Most Extraordinary French Lemon Cream Tart on pages 331-333

Here's this week's recipe:

Gooey Chocolate Cake
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
¼ 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.

Bon appetit

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