This recipe is so delicious that it’s worth going to the effort of getting an unusual ingredient. (The photo is pretty bad, I know.I should be making these again in the foreseeable future and will re-take it.)
Children will not like them, as they’re very strongly flavored. The alcohol in the beer bakes out, of course, but you can definitely taste it in the finished product. And I use bittersweet chocolate for the glaze, but you can use semisweet if you want a kinder, gentler version. I got this recipe from the King Arthur Flour catalog several years ago and ended up making it for a reception after a Celtic-themed concert. The Irish like their beer, don’t they? Make sure that you include a menu card telling people what these are. They are seriously, seriously chocolatey and seriously, seriously rich. I have made them much smaller than the original recipe.
Brownies, or some kind of simple bar cookie, are a great asset to have in your recipe box. You can pull them out, whip them up, and get them to the potluck or party in reasonably short order. You probably have a simple chocolate brownie recipe that you use; these two are a little off the beaten track. I’ve always had good success with them.
Here’s a shot of one of the chocolate lava cakes I made for my brother-in-law’s birthday party. I think the last time I made these was for the same occasion, two years ago. Gideon had said periodically since then that I should make them again, and my answer has always been, “I’ll make them for Ed’s birthday.” So here they are. I made some changes from the recipe I found online, and this is now a pretty standard recipe anyway. I did find it interesting that, as for a number of recipes, the innovation came about because of a mistake. Its originator, chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, apparently pulled a chocolate cake out of the oven too soon and realized that its underbaked warm center was actually an asset. Then he must have developed the individual cakes that are usual today. A full-sized version would be very messy to serve.
A number of years ago I was asked to do the rehearsal dinner for a gluten-intolerant bride. I wanted to make a dessert that she could eat, and I was told that she liked chocolate and pumpkin. Hmmm. I hadn’t ever really thought of that flavor combination, but it sounded pretty good. So I went online to see what ideas were out there, and I came up with a pumpkin-chocolate pie, basically a two-layer cheesecake baked as a pie. It had a crumb crust, which I couldn’t use, so I needed a way to make it easy to slice and eat without one. That’s how I came up with the idea of making it in muffin cups, and I called them “timbales.” Sounded pretty classy, and they were a great hit. Awhile after the dinner we were told that what the bride actually liked was raw pumpkin from the can mixed with chocolate chips! (I could have saved myself a lot of work by just serving a bowlful of that combination.) You’ll note that the picture doesn’t have the muffin liners, and that the timbales look a bit messy. That’s because I discovered at 6:15 AM that I didn’t have any liners. They are definitely easier and neater with the liners. Since I’m not making these gluten-free any more, I’ve added the chocolate-graham-cracker crust.