Chocolate Lava Muffins
Valentine's Day French Desserts
It's like eating the heart of chocolate. The exterior is light, like mousse, and the interior is soft like lava that flows out when you cut the muffin. Can be prepared with or without flavored "hearts".
The recipe belongs to French pastry chef Pierre Hermé, who also developed the technique of flavored hearts by freezing sauces. I've tried two types of fillings so far (with green tea and with raspberry) but I'm thinking of one with hazelnut sauce and another with orange sauce. Sounds good, doesn't it?
Ingredients
Batter
100g dark chocolate (70% cocoa)
125g butter at room temperature (82% fat butter)
80-100g sugar (depending on how sweet you want them)
2 eggs
30g flour
1 tablespoon rum (optional)
Flavored Hearts
- 100g white chocolate
30ml unwhipped heavy cream
1/4 teaspoon green tea powder (matcha) - 50g chocolate
250g raspberries
a little sugar
Makes: 5 muffins; the "hearts" yield more, but can be kept in the freezer for several months
How to prepare chocolate lava muffins
- Melt the chocolate over a double boiler.
- Cream the butter with sugar until fluffy.
- Add the chocolate to the creamed butter and mix until homogeneous.
- Then add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each. Add the rum.
- Finally add the flour and mix well. The batter is ready.
- For flavored hearts, melt the white chocolate over a double boiler and when melted add the cream and a little green tea to color it nicely. For the others, I put (frozen) raspberries on heat with a little sugar to taste and brought to a boil until the sugar melted, then removed from heat and added the chocolate melted over a double boiler.
- I put the heart batters in ice cube bags using a funnel and then froze them until solid. They can be kept for months in the freezer, they don't have to be used immediately.
* if you want to make simple muffins without a flavored center, skip steps 6 and 7; the muffins will still have a soft center even without these flavored hearts - I prepared the aluminum molds (8.5cm diameter) by greasing them with butter. I sprinkled cocoa on some to see the difference, but in the end the muffins came out easily from all the molds, so you can just grease them with butter.
- Put the batter in a pastry piping bag.
- Fill 1/3 of the mold with batter. If desired, place a frozen "heart" in the center. Cover with batter, filling only 3/4 of the mold.
- Bake at 170°C for 9-10 minutes. The muffins are done when the edges have risen, and you can still see a wet, unbaked circle in the center (see photo number 9). That's when they need to be removed from the oven, otherwise if you bake them longer, they won't have a soft center anymore.
* baking time is for 8.5cm molds; if using smaller molds the time will also be shorter; aluminum or silicone molds can be used - Turn them onto a plate and serve, optionally sprinkled with a little powdered sugar.
* they can also be served cold but they won't have the flowing soft center anymore, it will just be creamy
Frozen colored hearts
Melting chocolate over steam
Creaming butter with sugar
Adding chocolate to butter
Adding eggs one at a time
Adding flour
Putting batter in molds then the hearts
Filling greased molds with batter
Baked muffins
Chocolate lava muffins (simple version, without flavored heart)
Muffins by MariAna
