Chili's Molten Chocolate Cake
Chili's Molten Chocolate Cake
By Todd Wilbur
Menu Description: "Warm chocolate cake with chocolate fudge filling. Topped with vanilla ice cream under a crunchy chocolate shell."
Get out your "easy" button for this one. While the clone recipe for this top-requested Chili's dessert is extremely simple to make -- and can even be made days ahead of time -- the resulting presentation is impressive. A chocolate fudge cake mix is all you need for the cake part of the recipe (or you can use the scratch clone recipe here). The cake batter is poured into the large cups of a Texas-size muffin pan. When the cakes are done and cooled, invert them and cut a cylindrical chunk out of the bottom where the hot chocolate is loaded. Keep the cakes covered in the fridge until dessert time. To serve, nuke each cake for 45 seconds, plop a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top, thereby concealing the fudge compartment, and top it off with a little Magic Shell (a chocolate topping that hardens on ice cream). When your diners dig into the cake, a delicious hot fudge center oozes out of the warm chocolate cake, and you're launched up to superhero status.
Ingredients
Cake
1 18.25-ounce box chocolate fudge or dark chocolate cake mix
1 1/3 cups water
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
1 bottle Hershey hot fudge topping
8 scoops vanilla ice cream
Magic Shell chocolate topping
1. Make cake batter 'following directions on the box and pour 1/2 cup of batter into the greased cups of a large (Texas size, muffin pan. If your pan has six cups, bake the cakes in two batches of 4 cakes each. Turn all of the cakes out of the pan and let them cool.
2. The cakes will be served upside down, so you may have to slice a bit of the domed top off the cakes to help them lay flat when inverted. A serrated sandwich knife works best for this. After you've flipped over all of the cooled cakes, use a sharp paring knife to cut out a 1 1/2-inch diameter cylindrical chunk in the center of the bottom (now the top) of each cake. The hole should be about 1 1/2-inches deep. After slicing straight down into the cake in a circle, scoop out the chunk of cake with a teaspoon and discard the piece. Now you have a secret compartment to conceal the hot fudge payload.
3. Spoon about 2 tablespoons of fudge into each of the holes you've made in the cakes, then store the cakes in a sealed container in the refrigerator.
4. When you are ready to serve, heat one cake at a time in the microwave for 40 to 45 seconds on high, or until you see the fudge begin to bubble. Remove the cake from the microwave and let it rest for 30 seconds or so, then place a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of the cake. Pour a coating of Magic Shell chocolate topping over the ice cream and serve.
Makes 8 desserts.
This is the scratch version for the box cake mix called for in the recipe.
Duncan Hines
Moist Deluxe Dark Chocolate Cake Mix
Let’s say you want to make some chocolate cake -- like the popular mixes that come in a box -- but you don’t have much of a craving for propylene glycol mono- and diesters of fats, polyglycerol esters of fatty acids, cellulose gum, mono-and diglycerides or xanthan gum. Well, if you’re making cake from a box mix, that’s what you’ll be eating. Many of those additives are what give the cake you make with Duncan Hines cake mix its deluxe moistness. The good news is we can come very close to duplicating the store-bought cake mix with very simple dry ingredients and a little shortening. By combining the dry stuff, then thoroughly mixing in the shortening, you will have a mix that is shelf-stable until you add the same wet ingredients in the same amounts required by the real stuff. It’s a great way to make good, old-fashioned chocolate cake without the hard-to-pronounce additives. Plus, this mix is the same stuff required for the Oreo cookie clone here on the site. If you can’t track down the cake mix for that recipe, you now can make it from scratch.
Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 cups baker’s sugar (superfine sugar)
3/4 cup cocoa
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
4 tablespoons shortening
To make cake
1 1/3 cups water
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 large eggs
1. Combine flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Stir to combine. Add shortening, then use an electric mixer on medium speed to blend shortening into dry ingredients. Mix until no chunks of shortening are visible. This is your cake mix, which you can keep in a sealed container for several months until you are ready to make the cake.
2. To make the cake preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease the sides and bottom of two 9-inch baking pans or one 13x9-inch pan. Lightly flour the greased pans.
3. Blend dry cake mix (from step #1) with water, oil and eggs in a large bowl with an electric mixer at low speed until moistened. Increase speed to medium and beat for 2 more minutes.
4. Pour batter into pans and bake for 30 to 33 minutes for 9-inch pans, and 35 to 38 minutes for 13x9-inch pan. You can also make cupcakes with the mix. They take 19 to 22 minutes.
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