Sweet golden cakes with an erupting blackberry ganache centre. Serve these molten white chocolate blackberry lava cakes with fresh blackberries for a terrific, if decadent dessert.
When I was leafing through Chantal Coady’s book Rococo: mastering the art of chocolate a few weeks ago, I was struck by her recipe for White Chocolate Heartbreakers. These are white chocolate cakes served warm with a molten raspberry and white chocolate middle – rather like a chocolate fondant.
I bookmarked it straight away as I thought it would be an excellent dessert for the upcoming blackberry season. Who wouldn’t want a surprise purple melting middle?
Rococo by Chantal Coady
This was the first time I’ve made a recipe from this book. Annoyingly it was not watertight; the quantities used were inconsistent and some of the methodology didn’t make sense. In fact, I suspect the book suffers from being poorly edited, which is a shame as it’s a marvellous book with lots of fabulous recipe ideas.
The index is a shambles. I couldn’t find this recipe indexed under raspberries for instance. In fact I couldn’t find it in the index at all.
Luckily I know a thing or two about baking, so adapting the recipe and making these blackberry lava cakes wasn’t too much of an issue.
Blackberry Lava Cakes
Before I start I must warn you that this recipe uses an awful lot of white chocolate and I only used half the amount given in the original. I ended up with 25g of stray chocolate that was unaccounted for, but as I’d already cut it up, I incorporated it anyway.
I had an inkling that the white chocolate would caramelise at the base, which it did. So I put the stray chocolate on the top of the cakes, hoping it would do the same, which it did. I made the full quantity of the surprise centre as I had designs on it for another recipe – my chocolate blackberry cake. I made the blackberry melt centre the night before in order to allow the mixture to freeze, except it didn’t.
As you can tell, not everything went according to plan and I have quite a few quibbles with Chantal’s recipe. The ganache didn’t freeze for a start, so it was difficult to remove it from the ice-cube tray.
The result, however, was fabulous and these little puds are a decadent and delicious dessert I’d be happy to serve up at any dinner party.
As envisaged, the white chocolate base and top caramelised giving another layer of flavour and texture to these gorgeous volcano cakes. The blackberry ganache was a star, even though it erupted all over the cakes and didn’t come out as a neat melting pool of purpleness in the middle. Blackberry and white chocolate lava cakes would be a more appropriate name and the one I have in fact used.
Do let me know how successful your melts are. And if you have any top tips, please share them.
Other Blackberry Recipes You Might Like
- Blackberry & apple crumble
- Blackberry & apple spelt soda bread
- Chocolate blackberry jam
- Coconut & rose blackberry barfi
- Double blackberry chocolate galette
- Hedgerow jelly
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Choclette x
Blackberry Lava Cakes. PIN IT.
Blackberry Lava Cakes – The Recipe
White Chocolate & Blackberry Lava Cakes
Ingredients
Blackberry & White Chocolate Ganache
- 125 g blackberries
- 80 g white chocolate – roughly chopped
Lava Cakes
- 50 g unsalted butter
- 200 g white chocolate – half roughly chopped and the other half chopped into small pieces
- 2 large eggs (I used duck eggs)
- 1 pinch Himalayan rock salt
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- 60 g self-raising flour
- 50 g ground almonds
Instructions
Blackberry & White Chocolate Ganache
- Purée the blackberries with a stick blender, then press through a sieve to extract the seeds.
- Melt the white chocolate in a bowl suspended over a pan of hot, but not boiling, water.
- Add the purée to the bowl and stir until combined.
- Fill six ice-cube holes with the mixture and put any remains in the fridge for future use. Freeze the mixture overnight.
Lava Cakes
- Melt the butter in a pan over a gentle heat.
- Remove from the heat and add the 100g of roughly chopped white chocolate. Leave for a few minutes then stir until melted and smooth.
- Beat in the eggs, one at a time along with the salt and vanilla extract.
- Sift in the flour and add the ground almonds. Stir gently to incorporate.
- Add 50g of the white chocolate pieces to the batter.
- Distribute about 25g of the chopped chocolate between 6 silicone muffin moulds or lined tins.
- Cover the chocolate with a spoonful of batter. Place a frozen blackberry ganache on top of each one, then cover with the remaining batter.
- Top with a blackberry and the remaining chopped chocolate.
- Bake at 160℃ (320℉, Gas 3) for 30 minutes when the cakes should be well risen and golden.
Notes
Nutrition
Sharing
I’m sending this off to Bookmarked Recipes with Jac over at Tinned Tomatoes.
As purple is the theme for Vegetable Palatte this month, I’m also sending these off to Shaheen over at Allotment 2 Kitchen.
Anything goes for Treat Petite with Cakeyboi and The Baking Explorer this month and as it’s their first anniversary something special is required. So I’m sharing these blackberry and white chocolate melts with them too.
I’ve rather neglected Bake of the Week recently, so I am sending this off to Casa Costella while I remember.
Likewise, I haven’t entered Recipe of the Week for a while either. So A Mummy Too also benefits from one of these Blackberry Volcano Cakes 😉
Blackberries and white chocolate? You trying to kill me? Hah, those are probably my two favorite sweet things to eat. Haven’t tried them together….yet! Pinned, thank you
It’s a lovely combination Keto as are blackberries and dark chocolate – surprisingly.
I have never had this combo before and so so want to. The round up should be up later tonight, Thank you so much for being part of VegetablePalette
Thanks Shaheen. I’ve just seen the round-up and everything looks so good – purple is a great colour 🙂
They look wonderful and I delight in the name volcanos! What a shame that you had to do so much work to the original recipe though. Thanks so much for joining in with #Bakeoftheweek x
Thanks Helen – I was rather taken with volcano too 🙂
A scrumptious combination of flavours! These muffins look droolworthy.
Thank you Angie – they were very tasty indeed.
What a shame the recipe didn’t really go to plan but your cakey volcanoes do look lovely. I love the idea of an oozing berry and white chocolate centre. Definitely an idea worth returning to.
Thanks Jo, yes these are very well worth doing and I have bookmarked them for a future occasion.
The idea for the recipe sounds amazing if the actual recipe is a little lacking – I hope you are able to try a few more recipes to see how they hold up – and if they are anything like this one they would be inspired – and hopefully your experience could get around any odd instructions
I will be using this book again Johanna and it will be interesting to see how it bears up 2nd time around. It does make good bed-time reading and dreaming though.
What a shame the book’s a bit of a shambles but your recipe looks superb and such a gorgeous idea to have a secret centre of white choc and blackberry! Yes please!
Thanks Lou. I love the idea too and even though they didn’t come out as expected, they were a great contrast of colours and flavours.
it’s an interesting idea – I suspect this comes down to not enough budget to recipe test properly!
Who knows Fiona – it seems very strange as it’s such a beautiful and expensive book.
Sounds like an unhelpful book! Its so irritating when the recipe doesn’t add up. Still…. the end result looks delicious regardless and anything with blackberry is beautiful………..
Thanks Kate. It’s really strange, it’s a beautiful and expensive book, so I don’t understand why more care wasn’t taken.
It’s a shame that the recipe wasn’t quite good, but your cupcakes look delicious 🙂 x
Thanks Charlene – they turned out well despite the recipe 🙂
That’s a lovely idea for using blackberries, cute cakes.
Thanks Janice – this year we seem to have an abundance of blackberries, so it’s good to have some different ways of using them.
Great result that the recipe didn’t work out as planned because the new name you’ve had to give them is fantastic. I’ll bet volcano cakes will be world famous before long!
Ah thanks Vohn. I’m very tempted to go and change the name now.
I know you say not everything went to plan, but they look so tasty.
#UKBloggers
Thank you for your lovely comment Fashion Mommy.
Oh wow these look amazing. Bet they taste great too! You can’t beat chocolate and berries – the best combo!
Emma x
You are so right Emma, chocolate and berries are a great combination.
What a great combination of white chocolate and blackberries. I never quite know what to do with blackberries aside from popping them in apple crumble. Now I have another recipe in the wings.
Thanks Madeleine – you’d better be quick, blackberry season is nearly over 😉