Magic Chocolate Lava Cake Recipe | Chocolate Fondant
Step 1: Serve the dessert to the guests at the table.
Step 2: Add some hot chocolate sauce.
Step 3: The sauce magically drops down into the middle of the dessert.
Step 4: Take a spoonful and chocolate ganache oozes out of the centre like molten lava onto the cold plate.
Sydney is home to some great chefs, one of them Peter Gilmore came up with this impressive chocolate dessert idea. The real thing has 8 different textures and will set you back $175 to try it as part of his set menu at his restaurant Quay. I have greatly simplified the idea for you but kept the ‘magic’ and added lava. This recipe makes 6-8 lava cake desserts depending on the size you cut your circles.
Chocolate Lava Cake recipe
Chocolate Discs
140g (4.94 ounces) tempered chocolate
Chocolate Brownie Base
300g (10.58 ounces) or 1 1/3 cups plus 2 tspns butter or margarine
6 eggs
3 cups or 654g (23.07 ounces) sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
dash of marsala (optional)
3/4 cup or 90g (3.17 ounces) cocoa powder
2 1/4 cups or 360g (12.7 ounces) plain flour
3 tsp baking powder
(optional – you can add nuts, dried fruit or chocolate chips)
Line a baking tin 26cm (10.24 inches) x 38cm (14.96 inches) with baking paper, if your tin is not deep use the baking paper to make a wall around the edge and staple into place. This prevents it overflowing in the oven.
Melt butter in the microwave, beat in sugar, eggs, cocoa, flour and baking powder until just combined.
Add the vanilla and marsala, pour into baking tray and sprinkle with chopped chocolate or nuts.
Bake at 356°F (180 degrees Celsius) (or 180°C (356 degrees Fahrenheit)) until a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean
Ganache
200g (7.05 ounces) milk chocolate
80g (2.82 ounces) dark chocolate
100millilitres (3.38 fluid ounces) cream (if you can’t get hold of cream you can use milk but use slightly less)
Place chocolate pieces in a bowl, melt the chocolate (if using a microwave be careful not to burn it, do 30 seconds, stir, 20 seconds, stir, 10 secs stir then 10 secs until melted). Then pour in your cream and keep stirring until it comes together to make a nice smooth ganache.
Make sure your ganache is warm when you place it on the dessert.
My Cookbook
Stores that sell my book listed by country:
http://bit.ly/ARcookbook
All recipe quantities in the book are in grams, ounces and cups.
we respect your email privacy
Hi I am Alison and I follow you on youtube and just love your videos, I am 11 years old I live in Scotland and I love baking. I have been longing to do Christmas dinner but I realized it might be too hard so my mum said I could do dessert and thought this dessert would be perfect so could you give me any tips that used and maybe if its suitable for Christmas
thanks again Alison
Hi Alison, sounds lovely and yes you can use it for christmas. You can make all of it the day before and then reheat the ganache on the day
I’ve been searching for a chocolate rolled fondant recipe.
I’ve checked a few out on line and a lot of them have comments about beeing too dry and crumbly. I’ve made marshmallow fondant and it came out awesome the first time I tried it.
Never tried to make chocolate fondant though.
I have a birthday cake to make in a few weeks and wanted to try chocolate fondant and can’t seem to find a decent recipe.
HELP!!!
Hi Barb here is a detailed post about making it… https://www.howtocookthat.net/public_html/modeling-chocolate-recipe-make-modelling-chocolate/
Ann…i saw this recipe in YouTube three times and it looks incredibly yummy…i’ll try it out and i’ll send you a picture and a message of how it go through yahoo…if you can please give me your e-mail address
Hi! This is great! I’m making this for my mums birthday, she loves chocolate so I’m sure she will love this! I’m 14 and I’m making it on my own…Hopefully it will go well
hi ann .
if i want to use the milk with the ganache .
how many the ml ihave to use ?
hi raneem start with 70ml, you can always add more if needed
Oh! You are so talanted! I want to cook it special for my kid. But I’m not sure that I’ll manage to do it… But I’ll try))))
hello ann, i was just wondering how much is 100ml in cupcs for the chocolate ganache? and can i use a 1 cup of chocolate for thechocolate ganache?
Just wondering if you can give an APPROXIMATE time for baking in the oven? Thanks, just seems strange to say to bake until a knife comes clean? Like are you talking 12 minutes? 15 mins? 30 mins? Please advise. Thanks
Hi Joanna, ovens and tray sizes mean that the baking time can vary widely, start checking it after 15 minutes
Hi 🙂
I am having a Master Chef competition at school in my cooking class and I’m going to make this as my dessert, I tried it at home and it was delicious!! Everyone enjoyed it!! 😀
I was just wondering, to be accurate, what temperature did you bake it at in the oven and how long?
By the way, I live in Sydney, Australia 😉 I’m 14
This is how it turned out at home 🙂
yummmm looks good
Hi Mahrukh, my oven is 180 degrees C, bake it until a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean. Hope your competition goes well 😀
Hi Ann, I’m making this at school and its for a practice mock exam, will it be done in 1 hour? How long does it take to make?
Hi Maryam,
This will depnd on your experience. It would be best to practice at home first so you are confident of your timing. Ganache is quick to make and your brownie base will cook in time but you need it to cool and your chocolate discs to set as well.
Hi, I want to try this recipe today but I wanted to know if I can use white chocolate for the disk ? My sister doesn’t like it when it’s all dark/milk chocolate so I wanted to know if I can use the white chocolat.
Thank you so much!
HI Tiphaine, yes you can 😀
Hi! I really appreciate you putting the ingredients in grams, that makes it sooo much easier for me because I’m European 😀 I watched the video and I am definitely going to try this.
🙂
Hi can u pls tell me if I’m allowed to use normal butter (floral) instead of baking butter 🙂
yes you can
Hi I love ur lava cake it was just the a lifesaver but I didn’t make it yet because our oven doesn’t work but I’m entering a competition ( I’m 11 by the way ) and I hoped you have some simple but complicated looking desserts 😉
Love
Someone in need of a professional <3
hi sarah, hopefuly your oven gets fixed soon 😀
Can I use melted chocolate instead of tempered?
hi elizabth, please see this post explaining tempering. https://www.howtocookthat.net/public_html/how-to-temper-chocolate-in-the-microwave/
If you just melt your chocolate it will not set firm at room temp.
Hi ,Ann
That’s really awesome.
I wanna make this cake to give my boyfriend but i want to ask this recipe is it for 6 cakes?
if i just make one,then the recipe should be how to change?
Hi Viann, if you only want to make one you could divide the recipe by 6 and bake in a round souffle dish instead of on a tray. Alternatively make the full amount and freeze the excess.
I’ve seriously made this brownie recipe like 15 times already and it comes out perfect ever time!!! thank you so much for such an awesome recipe!!!
hey aunty ann,
i just luv ur recipies especially dis one.. but when someone asked which kind f chocolates u use for tempering u said u use cadbury melts but where i live is in uae dubai.. so v dont hve tht here , i searched every where.. even in malls… but couldnt get it anywhere .. i wanna make this magical desert of urs for ma moms bday but is it okay to use cadbury dairy milk or something like that.. ? or maybe lint, galaxy.. or soething ? i’d love to know..
n yea i m only 13..
Hi anna, yes for tempering you need real chocolate which is any chocolate that contains cocoa butter, if you look on the ingredients in the packet as long as it has cocoa butter it is the right one, so cadbury dairy milk, lint are both good, I haven’t seen galaxy so you’d need to read the label on that one. Have fun baking.
thnk u aunty ann.. i will post the picture after i make .. ma mom is gonna love it after all she love chocolate and anything made of chocolate.. 😀
hey ann.
1.im gonna do this recipe and i dont know about the chocolate disk.
how to make them cus im afreid the disk will break….
2.you can do something Glee(the tv show)?
Hey Ann, I’m making this for my mom’s birthday tomorrow, and I was wondering what size baking pan you used & what was the size of the second circle cutter??
If I use Nestle melts, can I just pour onto a baking sheet and freeze it once it’s in circle formation? Also, how many cakes are made?
Hi Emma, yes that is correct the chocolate melts are ‘fake’ chocolate so can go straight into the freezer to set, tempered real chocolate should be left at room temperature to set. The number of cakes it makes depends on the size circle you use, I made six using an 11.5cm circle.