MOLTEN CHOCOLATE CAKES

Ingredients

1 cup unsalted butter
8 ounces semisweet chocolate chips, or bars, cut into bite-size chunks
5 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
Pinch of salt
4 teaspoons flour
8 extra-large paper muffin cups (or use regular paper muffin cups, which will make 12 cakes)

Directions
Melt butter and chocolate in a medium heat-proof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water; remove from heat. Whisk together eggs, sugar and salt in a medium bowl until sugar dissolves. Beat egg mixture into chocolate until smooth. Stir in flour until just combined. Adjust oven rack to middle position.  Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Line a standard-size muffin tin with 8 extra-large muffin papers (papers should extend above cups to facilitate removal). Spray muffin papers with vegetable cooking spray. Divide batter among muffin cups. Bake until batter puffs but center is not set, about 8 minutes. Carefully lift cakes from tin and set on a work surface. Pull papers away from cakes and transfer cakes to dessert plates.

Let's Dish
I confess, I have had limited success making these with the muffin papers.  If you decide to go with 12 cakes, I recommend the foil muffin papers that can be set directly on a baking sheet.  Otherwise, they are very tricky to remove from the muffin tin without making a chocolate lava mess.  I usually bake these in ramekins (be sure to grease them first), and it's much less hassle.  In fact, you can eat them right from the ramekins if you don't want to risk turning them out onto a plate--they'll still look fantastic and taste delicious.  I have 7-ounce ramekins and can make five cakes.  With 4-ounce ramekins I'm guessing you could make about 8 cakes. 

The trickiest part of this recipe is getting the baking time just right.  Using the 7-ounce ramekins, the cakes are just right after about 10 minutes.  With twelve regular sized muffin cups, your cooking time should be closer to 7 minutes.  These are much easier than they look, and the batter can be made a day or two ahead of time, spooned into your ramekins or muffin cups, and then refrigerated.  Just return the cakes to room temperature an hour or so before baking.  These are delicious served with ice cream, whipped cream, or raspberry puree.

Who Dished It Up First
Adapted from allrecipes.com.