it's all about the chocolate...gooey chocolate cupcakes to die for!

so, do you remember that charming old-school bar of handmade dark couverture chocolate i posted about here? well i finally found THE perfect recipe for it's true test...yes, gooey chocolate cupcakes! i found the recipe while browsing many of the baking blogs that i frequently haunt as this is a recipe from dorie greenspan's book 'baking from my home to yours'. and there is a food blogging group out there called 'tuesdays with dorie' who are currently working their way through this book baking all the recipes and this was one of them. well, when i saw this...i just knew...this would be the perfect recipe and it was! my gosh, if you don't bake this recipe at LEAST once in your lifetime, you are truly missing out on one of life's pure joys. this was to die for!!!! the delicious irish chocolate completely lived up to its baking and taste test and rose to the occasion. the flavour of the chocolate is rich and smooth and velvety in the mouth and just perfect in this little cake (and i'm so proud to be using irish chocolate!). i was so pleased with the result that i would definitely buy the chocolate again and will certainly be making these cupcakes again. i couldn't get them out of the wrappers fast enough and into bowls for everyone in the house to eat. and there were groans and sighs as mouthful after mouthful was devoured and enjoyed!

i served them with some strawberries (important to get those designated servings of fruit into the menu!) and honeycomb ice-cream which i discovered by accident in the supermarket and thought would be fun to try. it was! it tasted like cadbury's crunchie!

i really cannot sing the praises of this recipe enough. it was SO easy to make, SO fast to bake and even faster to eat! by the time i got around to photographing the one remaining cupcake, the gooey middle had firmed up a little (i guess it continued to bake even after coming out of the oven!) but everyone elses had their chocolate just ooze out like a lovely molten flow of lava. unfortunately i was so busy serving everyone that i didn't get to capture this on camera.

and the recipe...

Gooey Chocolate Cake

Recipe from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From my home to yours

INGREDIENTS
1/3 cup all-purpose flour

3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

5 oz bittersweet chocolate

– 4oz coarsely chopped

– 1oz very finely chopped

4 oz unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces

2 large eggs, at room temperature

1 large egg yolk, at room temperature

6 tablespoons of sugar

INSTRUCTIONS
Centre a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Use 6 paper soufflé cups or buttered ramekins.
Sift the flour, cocoa and salt together.
Set a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of gently simmering water, put the coarsely chopped chocolate and the butter in the bowl and stir occasionally over the simmering water just until they are melted. Remove the bowl from the pan of water.
In a large bowl, whisk the eggs and yolk until homogenous. Add the sugar and whisk until well blended, about 2 minutes. Add the dry ingredients and, still using the whisk, stir (don’t beat) them into the eggs. Little by little, and using a light hand, stir in the melted chocolate and butter. Divide the batter evenly among the cups and sprinkle the finely chopped chocolate over the batter.
Bake the cakes for 13 minutes. Transfer them, still on the baking sheet, to a rack to cool for 3 minutes. (There is no way to test that these cakes are properly baked, because the inside remains liquid.)
After the 3-minute rest, unmold the cakes onto a plate. Serve with ice-cream, strawberries or whatever takes your fancy!