What we're going to do, we're going to start off by melting the chocolate and the butter. So what if I have here is eight ounces of semi-sweet, not bitter-sweet, I use to say semi-sweet because I don't really put a lot of sugar in it, because I want the flavor of the chocolate to be pronounced not the sweetness of the sugar to come through.
So what I've here is a double boiler, which is just basically a pan underneath boiling water, and that's your best way to melt the chocolate. And it's always good to start off with the bowl little bit hot like this one is. So we're going to add the chocolate, then we're going to add a half a pound of butter. So if you're looking for a healthy alternative for dessert, this is not it. But it's dessert, it's dessert. Are desserts supposed to be healthy? I've never really understood healthy desserts, but that's okay.
And then so what we've here, we've the chocolate, the butter and then we're going to put a little bit of the espresso powder in it, which is espresso beans ground up really fine. We've a total of four whole eggs and four egg yolks, so it's going to be really rich cake. So what we're going to do, we're going to add the whole eggs, add the egg yolks, then we have a quarter cup of sugar. We're going to add just a little bit of salt. We're going to make sure that this is nice and going. And like I said, if you start with a bowl already hot, it's going to speed it up almost by half. So and that's exactly what you want.
So what we're going to do, we're just going to whisk this together, and that's pretty much about it. To serve this cake is very unique because to get the actual effect of the melting center and things like that, you've to cook them in an individual manner, you can't cook them like in a whole pan or what not. Now this is a basic cake batter almost, so you can definitely do that if you want to, but you just have to watch it. Because what this cake is designed to do, it's designed to almost cook from the outside-in. A lot of cakes will almost cook from the inside-out but this one is actually minted where the very center is supposed to be really dense, really moist and things like that.
So what we do is we use these little four ounce ramekins, aluminum ramekins here. And the thing about these are is one, they are great because they are disposable. They are cheap, they are disposable, and you can find them in almost any supermarket, Albertsons, Smith, Wans, all those places have them. And these are actually four ounce cup. So the trick though is to making sure they don't stick, which I am crossing my fingers because I don't want them stick in front of everybody.
So what we're going to do, we're going to take a little bit of butter here. So what we're going to do with the flour is we're just going to take a little bit of flour, not too much, because the rest is going to be for the cake. And then we're just going to go around it, then shake off the excess, so you get a nice coat there.
A lot of people say, well, do you want to cool down the chocolate and the butter mixture beforehand? No, you don't. You actually want to kind of temper it in there, so it'll start cooking the eggs. So we're just going to get this chocolate and butter mixture lifting up, I mean look at this, you get to see this right here by itself and its fine.
Chocolate, espresso, and butter, those are three nice little ingredients. So we're just going to add and mix all at the same time, and it's coming together perfect. Just scrape that down, you don't want to waste any of that, it's like gold right there. And now what we're going to do is just fold in a little bit of flour, and what the little bit of flour does is it just kind of give it body what we're looking for. You don't want to go heavy on the flour, for this recipe you're going to put in about a little more than a tablespoon. I think on the exact recipe it's one tablespoon or one teaspoon of flour. And again, that's not to bind it, it's not to do anything like that; all that is for is to give it body and texture.
Alright, so what we're going to do we're going to spoon this into here. And you don't want to go all the way to top with these. You want to go a little bit more than halfway because with all these eggs in here it's going to rise. It's going to rise and then fall. I would let these cakes refrigerate for at least an hour to two hours before you bake them, because if you don't, right now they have a lot of air in them. There is a lot of air in the recipe, and if you don't let them rest for an hour or two hours, if you go ahead and bake them right now; what you are going to find on the top is that it's going to start cooking, all the air it's going to start pushing itself up and that's what you don't want.
So what we do, we just kind of tap it out, and as you -- well, you can't hardly see it, but there is bunch of little bubbles in here that are starting to pop, and that's exactly what you want. You want to get that air out. So what I've done, I've gone ahead and put them in the oven and they take about a good 12-15 minutes depending on your oven. At our place, in ENVY we've these big high-tech convection ovens, they take 12 minutes. I've made the exact recipe in the exact same container in my house, and it takes 17 minutes. Go figure.
So with this oven I don't know maybe it's in between, and you really have to watch these because these are the type of cakes where one time you're going to open up the oven and it's going to be like, oh wow, man these things are way far from done. But these are type of cakes that once the edges start to set, it's only going to be a matter of about three minutes before the whole cake is done. What we're going to accompany these with is a vanilla bean ice-cream, okay. Of course we don't have the time to make the ice-cream here but I'll go over with you.
We make all of our ice-creams in house, all of our ice-creams are made in house by our pastry chef and our pastry department. They turn out about 10 different ice-creams a day, ice-creams and sorbet a day. I am very big on the intensity of the ice-cream. I don't know maybe it's a childhood thing, I don't know, but I love fresh ice-creams. In my opinion fresh ice-cream is the night and day difference on what it is.
So we definitely make all of our ice-creams in house, and we basically have one vanilla base and that's for every base of ice-cream. And what that consists of is one quarter of heavy cream, we don't use any milk because as you know when you freeze milk it gets icy. If you freeze cream, it's just going to stay really creamy. So we use zero milk in there. I know a lot of recipes will call for milk and heavy cream or half an half or what not, and that's fine, you can do that. But in my opinion you're going to get that icy texture in there, if you don't use all heavy cream.
So we use a base of all heavy cream, eight whole eggs, and eight egg yolks, a cup of sugar, three vanilla beans and a tablespoon of vanilla extract, and that's it, that's all we do. We put it all in a pan, mix it all up real quick, it's not a cooked item. We mix it all up, we actually set it in the freezer and we set in the freezer in a bowl for about 10 minutes. Let the flavors marry together and then what we'll do from there, we'll actually take that off and we'll divide that up. Ice-cream and hot cake go hand-in-hand together.
So again, back with the whole philosophy of my cooking and where it comes from, I am an ingredient person. I totally believe in ingredients first. Take the chocolate cakes, we use fresh with eggs; our chocolate is Verona Chocolate. It's not cheap ingredient for us to buy, even at wholesale prices it's not cheap. And believe me at the end of the month, sometimes I got to go in and justify my food cost to my boss and stuff like that. But then I say, you know what, that's why people come into our restaurant, and say, this is the best cakes, and this the best this, this is best this because I don't compromise on ingredients.
We're going to check on our cakes because like I said we don't want those to over cook. Oh! And those are looking good. They'll take just about another minute. I would bring them out and show them to you but like I said with all the eggs and stuff like that, they rise and fall. And if I was to bring them out of the heat right now, they would fall and that's what I don't want. Because they are not, they are not just ready yet. They are just a little bit on the under size, so we're going to let those cook for just about a minute more, we're going to plate these up. Have a little fun with them.
And our cakes are ready. And there they are. Those look pretty good, huh? That's exactly what you want them to look like. Now they are very hot. Now as you can tell the middle of them is just perfect, and that's exactly how we want them to be. Okay, the middle of the cakes, I mean, right now I mean if you look it almost still looks little bit on the raw side, it's actually not. I mean it's perfect.
And let me tell you I am very, I am very happy with this recipe because I developed this recipe, and this recipe works perfect. I mean this recipe is one of the best recipes you can have for this type of cake, and it's tremendous. As soon as these cool down just for a minute, you don't really want to let them cool down all the way, but you want to let them cool down for just a minute and then we're going to serve them up.
Well, that's cool, we can get our ice-cream here ready. And I am big on serving the ice-cream really soft, I don't like to serve hard ice-cream. I think that's I don't -- maybe its me or more of a personal thing , but I just think that almost your cake and your ice-cream should be of the same textures but yet different temperatures.
So we're about to see if did these right, now if they pop right out then I did them right, if they don't, well then I probably going to be a little bit embarrassed but we'll see. But now they pop right out. You know and that's exactly why you want to do it with these little tins, because they don't burn, they don't do anything, its perfect. I mean you cannot bake them in these things, I promise you, you will not go wrong baking them in these. And that's it. It's a basic chocolate espresso cake with the liquid center.
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