Cin's molten lava cake - 1st attempt

Lin's birthday's coming up and seeing that she's one the few who actually enjoys my baking (she's just a nice nice person ;), I wanted to continue the 'baking a cake for her on her bday' tradition. Last year, I bake her a sinfully choc choc cake and as seen on the right, it was sinful alright :).

One of my favourite cakes of late is the molten lava cake. I just wished restaurants do not charge over $12 for one small helping. I decided to attempt making it for lin's bday which we are celebrating tomorrow and made the trip in the pouring rain today to Holland V to get the ingredients. I splurged a bit to buy Valrhona chocolate instead of the normal other brands. The lady at Shermay cooking school was really helpful and indulged me with a few samples of the different cocoa mix in the Valrhona chocolate range. I settled on the 62% cocoa one.

The recipe was relatively easy and my only setback was when I could not get the mixer going - had to yell for Jin who as usual managed to fix it :)..yay! I accidently let go of the cake holder (it was hot!) and the cake popped out before I could stop it and the choc oozed out :(. Mental note to self - bake the cake longer and don't let it drop next time round :p However, in terms of taste, I can only quote Homer Simpson : Hmmm,...chocolate :D I don't usually say this, but was feeling rather proud of myself. Even though it failed in presentation, I can confidently say that given a few more attempts, I would pay myself $12 for this cake! heehee

Unfortunately, I did not have the vanilla bean ice cream which was recommended in the recipe and I substituted with teh tarik flavoured ice-cream instead. Nope, just does not taste the same..am running to the store now to find the vanilla bean flavour. Hopefully, my 2nd attempt tomorrow will turn out better.