Yes. You heard me. See for yourself…

Yes. These are seriously good. I’m a firm believer in dessert before/instead of dinner, especially since it was the #romancecooking cookalong, so I’m posting this before my beloved dinner recipe (Think Lady and the tramp, love it!). And this dessert embodies romantic food… Make it for any special occasion and you shall be in the good books for at least weeks if not months..

I was going between some kind of brownie, some kind of fudgy chocolate cake, and was discussing with some of the girls in the tutorial room when everyone seemed to simultaneously coming up with lava cakes, or melty yummy chocolate thingys if one were to go by my original thought. And would you know it, Nigella had a recipe for them and I had the recipe in my grasp! I may have added a wee biteen more sugar, which I think stood to it. I’ve had these in some restaurants and it’s just not actually sweet enough, so I didn’t take that chance.

The chocolate: I used a mixture of a 60% and also a 73.5% gorgeous claudio corallo chocolate that I’ve been meaning to use for ages. It has cocoa nibs in it and is just delicious.

Without further ado – GO AND GET (this makes 6. Maybe double the recipe):

• 12 oz chocolate – see above!
• 70g butter
• 180g caster sugar
• 4 eggs, beaten
• Wee pinch of salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 50g four
• 6 custard/pudding tins – the wee ones. I also used some ramekins but the custard tins worked better!
• Baking non stick paper

What to do

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees, and put in a plain tray
2. Trace and cut out little circles for the bottom of the tins. Butter them, pop in the parchment, and butter a wee bit more! You don’t want these little gems to stick
3. Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over simmering water and set aside.
4. Cream the butter and sugar
5. Gradually beat in the eggs bit by bit along with the salt and vanilla
6. Add the flour and combine until it’s all mixed in
7. Add in the cooled (ish) chocolate and beat it until its a nice smooth batter
8. Divide evenly between the 6 tins –
9. Take your heated tray out of the oven and pop the tins onto it.
10. Put into oven for 10-12 minutes.
11. When done, gently remove, turn upside down onto your plate and gently tap the top. It should slide out pretty easily.

Give it a dusting of icing sugar and watch this happen…