As I was getting ready for work around 6:45 this morning, I got a call that I didn’t need to go in today, due to the winter storm we had last night.  I had really been needing a “mental health” day, so I was pretty excited. 

One of the things I decided to do this morning was to complete thatwife’s January food challenge, which I had signed up to do a few weeks ago: baking a chocolate cake from scratch.  I decided to make some pretty little mini-cakes, because I had been so excited to use the mold that Jon and Heather bought me for Christmas. 

Here is the recipe I used (source):

- 1 stick (4oz) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
- 4 oz bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
- 3 large eggs
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/3 cup flour
- Sifted powdered sugar for dusting
- Cooking Spray

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Move rack to the middle of oven. Spray eight 3-oz ramekins with Pam and place on baking sheet. Melt butter and chocolate in a small saucepan over low heat until smooth, stirring occasionally. Using an electric mixer, beat the eggs and sugar at medium speed until thick. Beat in the flour and then the chocolate. Spoon batter evenly into ramekins, filling 1/2 way full. Bake for approximately 12-14 minutes. Use a toothpick to make sure the cake has cooked thoroughly. Cool for a few minutes. Run a sharp knife around each cake to loosen from ramekin and remove to a plate. Dust each cake with powdered sugar.

Makes 8 mini-cakes.

((My changes: I used semi-sweet chocolate instead of bittersweet, and with my flower molds, it made 4 mini cakes.  I had to bake the cakes 3 minutes longer than the directions because my molds are bigger.))

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 at 7:59 am and is filed under cooking + baking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.