Too Many Cooks: Accidental Molten Chocolate Cake

Grace arrived at our house on Saturday and made two requests:  Did we have milk, and did we have dessert?

Milk we had.  We also had company, so it seemed that the right thing to do was to make our guests make their own dessert, right?

Given a short time frame, a three-year old, popcorn on the floor, and five people in the kitchen, I needed a simple recipe that didn’t take a lot of time. 

Chancellor (above) was testing his own recipes, so its a good thing this cake is a snap to make, and doesn’t require more than a bowl or two and a whisk. 

Done in two bowls.  One for the dry ingredients whisked together, and one for the wet ingredients.  Butter melted, sugar, eggs and vanilla whisked in.  Mix the dry, add the coffee, pour into a cake pan and throw it in the oven for 40 minutes. 

Piece of cake.

Almost.

In the confusion of recipe interpretation by all involved, mimosas, and the convenience of reachable pans, I grabbed the 9 inch round cake pan instead.   We got the cake into the oven and set it for 40 minutes.  Grace is learning how to tell if a cake is done, so at the sound of the buzzer, she carefully opened the oven, and tested with a toothpick. 

Very wet.  Back in the oven for 2 minutes. 

Buzzer again.  Very wet again.  Back in the oven for another 2 minutes.

After two more attempts, we decided to just take our chances and pull the cake out of the oven.  Chocolate does tend to bake after the fact and its often very easy end to up with an overbaked, dry result.

Hmmm........ I wondered.  This cake was exhibiting the classic symptoms of having too much batter in the pan.

Math Wiz to the rescue!!

Grace (who at 14 doesn't ask me for help with her homework, thank goodness) did a quick calculation, and sure enough, there is nearly 25% more room in a 9 inch square pan than there is in a 9 inch round pan.  Whodda thunk?

When there is too much batter in the pan, any cake will rise up and dome in the middle.  If you leave it in the oven long enough for the dome to finish baking, you end up with dry, often burnt outside edges.  If you take it out of the oven, the dome will fall, and leave you with a gooey mess in the middle.  Not a good result if you are making a layer cake.

But we weren’t. 

We were making a cake to snack on right out of the pan, hence the name Coffee Cocoa Snack Cake.  We cut the cake just as it was cool enough to handle.  It was very wet.  My instincts told me to pour a little heavy cream into the middle, and serve it warm.   

It has now been renamed Accidental Molten Chocolate Cake, and will forever be timed to get served about 30 minutes after it comes out of the oven.