Chocolate! SH and I were really looking forward to this episode. Now, I know this isn’t the best for my weight loss, but if you can’t indulge in chocolate every once in a while, life wouldn’t be worth it. And this is a whole lotta chocolate! The first recipe is Chocolate Lava Muffins. The makeshift double boiler to melt the chocolate worked really well and the chocolate melted perfectly. I’d heard that could be hard and I’ve never really done it before, so I was pleased. As much as the recipe sounds complicated, it was really quite easy. I “accidentally” got some of the batter on my finger and well, it was fantabulous! The muffins only cook for about 10 minutes and they really don’t look done (thus, the lava) and it was really hard to trust Alton and just take them out of the oven, but I did it and they turned out well.

Products: Organic butter, sugar, flour, vanilla, cocoa powder and bittersweet chocolate were all readily available. The recipe had a sauce made with melted ice cream and instant coffee. I’m allergic to caffeine, so I used decaf. I could not find organic instant coffee.

Overall: The muffins were VERY rich, but tasty. The gooey middle was good. I’m not sure about the sauce – it kind of made the non-lava parts soggy, which is not good eats – at least to me. I prefer it without the sauce. A scoop of ice cream might have been good, though. If you like chocolate, you will like these muffins. If you love chocolate – you will be in love.

SH: At the time the muffins came out of the oven, SH had three friends over – in the garage doing manly stuff (read: talking about motorcycles, spear guns and other man toys). SO, they were all invited in for a taste test. Here are the reactions:

MVF: “WOW. That’s rich, but good.”

KW: “The sauce isn’t overwhelming coffee, it’s good.”

CW:”YUM. It is lava in the middle.”

SH:”Tasty. It’s really chocolatey. We are making these again sometime, right?”

They were so rich and good, I made SH take them to work with him so I wouldn’t eat them all!

Up next: MORE CHOCOLATE!!