Lava cake, melting heart, liquid chocolate - the name of the popular French dessert is literally translated from different languages ​​- chocolate fondant, the recipe of which is difficult, but still novice confectioners can master. Strict adherence to cooking instructions and the secrets of experienced chefs will help surprise your loved ones with an exquisite restaurant dessert.

Chocolate Fondant: A History of French Dessert

This dessert, now popular, is quite young - it is not even forty years old, it appeared at the end of the twentieth century (1981-1987). But even though the fondant appeared recently, two French chefs claim to be authors of this dish - Jean-Georges Fongerichten, a French chef who emigrated to the United States, and Michelle Braz, a pastry chef from France.

According to one version, the emigrant chef, working in the Lafayette restaurant in New York, just took out chocolate muffins ahead of time when their middle was not baked. To hide his oversight, he introduced them as a new dish.

According to Michel Bra, the work on creating a chocolate fondant is a long way from successful and not very experiments. In his performance, this dessert is prepared from biscuit dough, in which a ball of frozen chocolate ganache is drowned. The temperature difference in the oven and the frozen center helps to get a liquid center.

Classic Chocolate Fondant Recipe

Chocolate is an important ingredient in this gourmet French dessert, so you need to pay special attention to its quality.Chocolate icing is not suitable here, but only high-quality dark chocolate with a cocoa content of 72% or more.

Proportions of all products used:

  • 200 g of chocolate;
  • 200 g of plums. oils;
  • 3 eggs;
  • 150 g of powdered sugar;
  • 50 g of flour;
  • drain. butter and cocoa powder for the preparation of molds.

The cooking process step by step:

  1. First, in a steam bath or microwave, you need to melt the chocolate with short pulses. It should only be brought to a liquid state, but not overheated and not allowed to burn.
  2. In melted chocolate put butter at room temperature, cut into small cubes, stir everything until the butter is completely dispersed in the chocolate.
  3. Mix eggs with powdered sugar. It is better to do this manually to avoid the formation of bubbles and foam, since this test is not needed for airiness. Pour chocolate and butter into the eggs in a thin stream, and then stir in the flour.
  4. Grease the muffin molds with melted butter and sprinkle with cocoa powder, fill them with dough отправить and send to the oven.
  5. Prepare the fondant in top-bottom mode or with convection at 200 degrees for 12 minutes in ceramic and iron molds. In silicone molds and small cocotte mills, the process takes only 5-7 minutes.
  6. Ready fondant with extreme accuracy, so as not to violate the integrity of the thin crust, remove on a serving plate and serve warm with a ball of vanilla ice cream.

How to cook a dessert in the microwave?

To make a fondant with flowing chocolate filling in its classic representation using a microwave oven will not work. The fault of this will be the technology of heating products. Unlike the oven, the products in it heat more strongly in the center, which does not allow you to get a liquid middle, but after making some changes to the recipe for popular muffins in microwave mugs, you can get a dessert very similar to a fondant.

For a chocolate dessert in a microwave oven, you should take:

  • 40 g of cocoa powder;
  • 40 g of powdered sugar;
  • 40 g flour;
  • 40 g of vegetable oil;
  • 60 ml of milk;
  • 20 g of dark chocolate.

How to make a chocolate fondant in the microwave:

  1. We prepare two ceramic or glass cups with a volume of 250-300 ml each. Mix the dry components of the dough in a separate container, then combine them with milk and butter.
  2. Pour the dough into cups. Then drown a small piece of chocolate in the center of each of them. It is he who, having melted, will not let the center harden.
  3. Cook the fondant at the maximum power of the device (950 W) for 1 minute and 10 seconds. Serve right in the cup in which the dessert was prepared, sprinkled with cocoa or powdered sugar on top.

Step-by-step recipe from Julia Vysotskaya

A famous chef in the post-Soviet space has his own recipe for this treat. Its highlight is vanilla sugar for dough, the aroma of which perfectly complements the chocolate flavor, and a crispy crust of brown sugar.

For vanilla-chocolate fondant from Julia Vysotskaya you need to take:

  • 170 g of dark chocolate;
  • 125 g of soft butter;
  • 50 g of flour;
  • 3 yolks;
  • 3 chicken eggs;
  • 80 g of vanilla sugar;
  • brown sugar and butter for molds.

Cooking step by step:

  1. Melt chocolate and butter in a water bath without stirring or touching these ingredients with metal objects (spoon or whisk).
  2. Beat flour, yolks and sugar until lush light mass with a mixer. Connect melted and slightly cooled chocolate with butter alternately with three eggs, carefully punching the mixture with a mixer after each.
  3. Combine chocolate and flour mixes. Grease ceramic molds with butter and sprinkle with brown sugar, fill them in 2/3 of the dough and send for 9-12 minutes in the oven, heated to 175 degrees.

White Chocolate Fondant with Liquid Center

A chocolate fondant with a liquid center can be prepared not only taking dark chocolate as a basis, but also white. The taste of this dessert is more creamy.

The list and quantity of necessary products:

  • 200 g of white chocolate;
  • 250 g of condensed milk;
  • 100 g plums. oils;
  • 80 g of flour;
  • egg.

Working process:

  1. The butter with white chocolate should be sent to a steam bath and kept there until a homogeneous liquid. When the mixture cools down a little, whisk the egg and condensed milk, then the sifted flour.
  2. Fill the molds greased with butter, but not to the brim with dough and bake at 180 degrees for no more than 15 minutes. To check the readiness of the fondant, you need to open the oven door after 5-7 minutes and gently tap on the top of the dessert with a spoon. If she grabbed a crust, the dish is ready, otherwise repeat the manipulations after two minutes.
  3. Carefully remove the finished fondant into the dish and serve with berry sauce and ice cream.

Cooking option in a slow cooker

Chocolate fondant, which does not always go out in the oven, can be easily cooked in a slow cooker. Clever multi-assistant, several silicone molds and a proven recipe - this is a list of necessary conditions that will allow you to get chocolate muffins with liquid filling like lava.

The fondant recipe in a multicooker involves the use of the following products:

  • 200 g of dark chocolate;
  • 50 g plums. oils;
  • 40 g of sugar;
  • 2 eggs;
  • 40-60 g of flour;
  • cocoa, icing sugar and a scoop of vanilla ice cream if desired for serving.

The order of the confectionery processes:

  1. Using a steam bath, melt half the prescription amount of chocolate with butter. The homogeneous liquid butter-chocolate mixture should be slightly cooled.
  2. Beat the eggs and sugar slowly, having achieved the dissolution of all the sweet crystals, carefully introduce the liquid chocolate, after it - in small portions of flour, achieving the density of the dough, like the consistency of sour cream.
  3. In a greased silicone molds, put a tablespoon of chocolate dough on it, 20 g of hard black chocolate on it, which again pour on top with a spoon of dough; When preparing a fondant in a slow cooker, you can greatly simplify the procedure and not divide the chocolate bar into whole pieces of the right weight, simply by putting the round Truffle candy inside.
  4. Put the molds with the fondant in the slow cooker and cook in the “Baking” mode for about half an hour. Easy to take out the delicacy from the molds, serve dessert, sprinkled with powdered sugar with cocoa and a ball of ice cream.

Chocolate free with cocoa

When there was no chocolate in the house, you can still treat yourself to a delicious chocolate fondant. To do this, replace part of the flour in the recipe with cocoa powder. He will give the dessert a chocolate flavor and aroma, only you need to give preference to an alkalized product.

For two servings of dessert you will need:

  • 60 g plums. liquid oils;
  • 1 chicken egg;
  • 100 g of granulated sugar;
  • 5 ml of vanilla extract;
  • 20 g of cocoa powder;
  • 20 g of flour.

How to make a fondant without chocolate:

  1. Ghee mixed with egg, granulated sugar and vanilla extract. When this mixture becomes homogeneous, sift into it a composition of cocoa and flour.
  2. Distribute the liquid workpiece on the molds-frames, the bottom and the inner walls, which are treated with oil. Bake at 180 degrees until the top of the dessert grabs a thin crust. Carefully remove from the ramekin or serve in it.

Cooking dessert from the famous Gordon Ramsay

To reproduce the recipe for chocolate delicacies from Gordon Ramsay - a chef with the image of a merciless cynic, known from the popular TV show "Hell's Kitchen", you need to take:

  • 4 chicken eggs;
  • 4 yolks;
  • 200 g of sugar;
  • 200 g of quality dark chocolate;
  • 200 g of plums. oils;
  • 200 g of flour.

Additionally, you need 50 g of melted butter and cocoa powder to prepare the molds.

Stages of cooking:

  1. We prepare the molds. First, grease them with a silicone brush dipped in butter, and send them to the refrigerator. When the oil hardens, apply another layer, which is sprinkled with cocoa powder, and freeze everything again.
  2. Melt a prescription amount of chocolate in a container over boiling water.Put small cubes of butter in liquid and hot chocolate, rotate the blades to achieve complete homogeneity, and then allow 10 minutes to cool.
  3. Beat eggs, yolks and sugar in a dense lush mass, which in three doses is introduced into chocolate. Lastly, introduce flour. Arrange the mass in molds and cook the fondant for 10-12 minutes at 200 degrees.

Secrets of making a liquid filled fondant

Not everyone succeeds in conquering the chocolate fondant dessert the first time, but a few tips from experienced chefs will help to avoid the most common mistakes:

  1. The quality of chocolate for this dish is of paramount importance, so you need to choose a product with a cocoa content of 70%, and also the composition should not contain any vegetable and animal fats other than cocoa butter.
  2. To make the fondant - covered with a uniform thin crust on all sides, the oven must have a uniform distribution of heat, so the ideal preparation of this dessert is possible in the oven with convection or an electric device in the Top-Bottom mode.
  3. When preparing a treat for the first time, it is better to practice and first bake one cupcake with liquid filling in order to accurately determine the time required to achieve the desired consistency of the center in a particular oven and in the existing pan.

Thanks to a game of contrasts (cold and hot, sweet chocolate lava and fruit sourness), a dessert with a ball of ice cream or fruit sorbet is considered the most successful. Fresh berries (strawberries, raspberries, cherries) and a few mint leaves can become an additional decor.

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