Molten Chocolate Cake

Around here we're all pretty nostalgic about Molten Chocolate Cake. We used to order one and ask for five spoons whenever we had dinner at our nearby Chili's in Sarasota, roughly every week from 1997-2001. (Afterwards we'd drive across busy Highway 41 and stop in at Barnes and Noble. Then if it was still even barely light outside we'd pull in at a tiny neighborhood park and the kids, insane with sugar, would charge around in the gathering darkness for twenty minutes, mostly just tripping over each other's feet while I sat in the van reading whatever book I had just purchased. Was that negligent? Sorry, kids...! ) But you know, I can still hear the clashing of those thin metal spoons as we fought for the best bits of warm chocolate cake with creamy vanilla ice cream melting down the sides. And I can see the wild look in the chilldren's eyes as they vied to scrape every last bit of chocolate and caramel sauce off the serving plate. Should have brought the video camera and recorded that for posterity. That was our real life.

Anyway! Everyday Lad was the engine behind this project, this make-our-own-molten-cake. I assuredly was the one who snottily informed him some time ago that although we are mere mortals and not a multi-billion dollar restuarant franchise we could make this cake. And we did, using a recipe from that most unpopular and hence my favorite edition of the Joy of Cooking, the one that came out in 2002 or 2003 and was immediately reviled as being not dowdy enough. Seriously, that cookbook has fantastic recipes--tapas and tamales and pot au feus, creme brulees and molten chocolate cake. Plus --as an unexpected bonus the cake is completely wheat and gluten-free, so everyone in the family could grab a spoon and do battle like it was 1999.

How's it look? (It tasted wonderful, although perhaps a bit too chocolately. And we forgot caramel sauce. Here's the scene about four seconds after I called "GO!")