Valentines treat?

Once upon a birthday a few months back I made a cake for one of Eric’s aunts… I had gotten this cookie-bar pan at Kohls and was dying to try it, and was thinking about making these mini layer cakes, and this was the first one! Perfect!

The supplies, yellow cake squares, chocolate frosting and M&Ms!

assembled cakes, perfect sized single-servings

the finished product

A few weekends ago I went to the Pocono Mountains with Eric and friends. I made a huge dinner, pictures of the whole thing will come later, and dessert.  I had made Boston Creme cake, which was a real hit.  I had made it from a mix (which was actually pretty labor-intensive), but I want to make it again, this time with yellow cake mix and my own creme filling and ganache.

I think it’ll be just as good, if not better. Originally the creme filling was a bit runny, and the ganache… that was too easy to make to not just do it on my own. Also, this time, I am thinking about making it like what you see above, and have individual squares!  Maybe there’ll be little red-candy hearts or something on top…

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What are you making for your Valentines sweethearts?  Special plans?

Left over [frozen] chocolate lava cakes. Success!

I didn’t get pictures, but I think I have stumbled across something that works!

Since there are two of us, and the lava cake mix was for 6 (and there was a little left over) I froze the leftover ramekins and leftover batter.  The first two that I made the other night were delicious, but they were cooked the entire way through, no molten, gooey chocolate pouring out.  Pretty disappointing.

Last night I tried lowing the temperature a little and lessening the cook time by 2 minutes.  Maybe I shouldn’t have done both, but I’m *much* closer to the desired end result!  I’d say about half of the cake was molten, but it could barely stand up.

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So, here’s what I recommend:

Mix the batter and portion out into ramekins as directed, then freeze the ramekins overnight.  The batter will be slightly tacky  and give a little if you press on it. Mine didn’t freeze solid, which is good. Less wait, the better!

Preheat the oven to about 425 degrees.  Place the ramekins in a shallow bowl of warm water for 5 minutes to bring up the temperature of the ramekins so they won’t crack.  Make sure the water doesn’t spill into the top of the ramekins! I replaced the water again with almost hot water and let it sit for another 5-7 minutes for good measure.

The directions say bake for about 15 minutes.  Since mine cooked all the way through when I cooked for that long, I recommend a cooking time of about 14 minutes.  Let sit for 7 minutes to cool, flip out onto a plate to serve.

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It’s not too much different from the directions, but the lower temp helps to prevent the cake from cooking the entire way through, and with the center of the batter being cold when you put it in the oven, I think that also helps to keep the center molten through baking.  You’ll have enough hot molten center to skip the extra chocolate sauce for the ice cream on the side!