Chocolate love

Chocolate lava cake


Ingredients

1 stick  unsalted butter
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate
3 whole eggs
1/4 cup sugar
Pinch of salt
2 tbspns all-purpose flour(Maida)
1 tspn vanilla essence

Preheat oven to 450 F, and grease the ramekins with butter/oil

In a bowl beat egg and sugar until sugar completely dissolves(i used whisker to mix all the ingredients no need to use hand mixer).

Using double boiling method melt chocolate and butter, whisk until smooth. 

Now add this chocolate mixture to egg and sugar mix along with maida , salt and essence. Mix thoroughly, spoon this batter into ramekins and bake 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes take it out and cool for few seconds,say for a minute. Edges would be hard and center portion will be soft. Now carefully turn it over to dessert plate, top with whipped cream or ice cream. I don't have both in stock, so just dusted with powdered sugar. Serve immediately then only you can see the warm chocolate flowing out like lava. 

Fruit/Plum cake

Fruit Cake

1/4 cup each red and green candied cherries (you can use tutti-frutti also)
1/4 cup black raisins
1/4 cup yellow raisins
1/4 cup apricot
Rum or brandy to soak. *** IF you don't like adding alcohol you could soak dry fruits in orange juice as well.

In a glass bottle put all the above ingredients, pour rum/brandy to cover dry fruits. Let this sit for atleast 2 days.

Also - take 1/4 cup each of cashew nuts, pista,walnuts - chop these and dust it with flour to prevent sinking to the bottom while baking.

Dry ingredients

All- purpose flour - 1 3/4 cup, baking powder - 1 tsp, salt- 1/2 tsp. Mix all these well.

Wet ingredients

Whole eggs -3, brown sugar - 1 cup, butter - 1 stick/cup, v.essence- 1 tsp, 1/4 cup-orange juice

Powder brown sugar, add butter and beat using a hand mixer until it is fluffy. Add eggs one at a time and continue beating until you get a soft and creamy mixture. Add vanilla essence and orange juice, combine well.

Once the wet ingredients are combined very well, slowly add flour and mix. Do not use hand mixer. Folding it gently, mix all the ingredients well.

Now the last part- empty the dry fruits bottle into the batter (need not strain, as the rum/orange juice gives all the flavours a fruit cake is expected to have) Again mix it very well.
Lastly add in the chopped nuts and stir once more. That's it.

Preheat the oven at 300 f(USA)/ 180 C and bake this for atleast 45 minutes. Always keep an eye on it as the oven temperature may vary . You can google for temperature conversions.

If sugar is high, always good to bake in lower temperature as it may turn brown faster and you get a burning smell.