Individual molten chocolate cakes (p. 729) and Liquor-flavored whipped cream (p. 755)

I know I'm like a broken record but I really want to finish the randomly selected list. I'm so bored by it! It's time for a new one. Rachel had pointed out that I had managed to make almost none of the desserts on the list, which was true, so I decided to start to rectify that and make Individual molten chocolate cakes (p. 729).

I started by melting my semisweet chocolate and butter (equal parts! I liked the looks of that!) in my double broiler until smooth:



TJOC says you can microwave the chocolate but I like using the double broiler more. I almost forgot to fill the bottom with water, which would have been counter-productive and idiotic. When it was smooth I mixed in some unsweetened cocoa powder--TJOC says to sift it in but I didn't want to get the sifter dirty and I couldn't see why it would matter, since you would be sifting after measurement. I didn't do it (I'm such a rebel!).

In a clean bowl I whipped four egg whites from this:



to this:



I don't know if those are stiff peaks but they looked good enough--I didn't have any cream of tartar so I used lemon juice instead. My thought process was that people have been whipping eggs for hundreds of years and I doubt everyone had access to cream of tartar--it must not be completely necessary. (I looked it up in On Food and Cooking--it's not)

I folded the egg whites into the chocolate:



And poured them in to the prepared muffin pan (which was buttered and sugared):



About seven minutes later they were done. They shrunk away from sides and when I turned the pan over they all popped out with no problem into adorable little individual cakes!



I thought, what is better with little lava cakes than some whipped cream? And what is better than Liquor-flavored whipped cream (p. 755), flavored with Kahlua?

The cream whipped right up--TJOC says to whip the cream and then add the sugar and liquor, I added the sugar and liquor and then whipped, and it was fine.




A little whipped cream on the cake:



OMG--it was so incredibly good! This might be one of my favorite desserts I've ever had! The inside was molten and it was extremely chocolatey but it wasn't overpowering because the cakes were so small. I think it would be EVEN better if I had a little squirt bottle of chocolate sauce to drizzle over the top, like the restaurants.

I think that this would be the PERFECT finish for a dinner party. One of my biggest arguments with most "dinner party" desserts is that they would require active time in the kitchen during the meal--and who wants to be in the kitchen cooking when all their friends are in the house? The chocolate cakes can be made the day before and popped (cold) into the oven so that you would have hot chocolate cakes with almost no time in the kitchen. And THAT is perfect. Plus they are elegant and look much more difficult than they are--a perfect dinner party dish.