I have always loved me some chocolate. Make that a molten lava cake a la mode and I’m ALL IN!  As someone with a serious sweet tooth I often make restaurant choices based on their dessert menu.  On weekends when I was home from college my mom would ask me where I wanted to go to dinner. I would almost always opt for The Lyceum (which apparently is now closed – just found that out when Googling it).  Anyways, I found Paul Deen’s recipe for Molten Lava Cakes and decided to give it a whirl.  Let me just say it is YUMMMMMOOOO! I could eat it everyday, but everything in moderation, right?!

Ingredients:
6 (1-ounce) squares bittersweet chocolate
2 (1-ounce) squares semisweet chocolate
10 tablespoons (1 1/4 stick) butter
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar
3 large eggs
3 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F and grease 6 (6-ounce) custard cups.  Melt the chocolates and butter in the microwave, or in a double boiler.  A double boiler is simply steaming water that doesn’t touch the glass bowl above it.

Combine the flour and sugar in a bowl and the eggs/yolks in another bowl.

Add the flour/sugar mixture to the melted chocolate/butter.

Stir in the eggs and yolks until smooth. Stir in the vanilla.  Divide the batter evenly among the custard cups.

Place in the oven and bake for 15-18 minutes. The edges should be firm but the center will be soft and a little runny.  If you plan to save a few lava cakes for another night like we did, I would suggest slightly under cooking them say 12ish minutes.  That way when you reheat them you won’t cook the center through.

Run a knife around the edges to loosen and invert onto dessert plates.  Add a scoop or TWO of vanilla ice cream to make lava cake a la mode!  Serve and enjoy. Super yummy!!!

Happy cooking!!

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I planned a small/intimate surprise birthday party for my husband turning 30.  And let me tell you he was SHOCKED when he walked in the front door.  I decided early on that I wanted the party to be beer themed, which clearly meant the cake needed to go with the theme.  I was very inspired by a bottle cap cake I found on a blog.

Unfortunately when it came time to making the cake I didn’t have enough time to make fondant.  So I went with option B.  Swiching from a cake to cupcakes. I mean cupcakes are in anyways so win!  Then I made made little bottle cap decorations for each of the cupcakes.  They are super easy to make.  AND how cute are these???

What you need:

Toothpicks
Glue
Beer Bottle Caps

Place a small dot of your duco cement in the center of the bottle cap. Let it dry for 30 seconds or so.

Place the toothpick at an angle into the glue dot.  Roll the toothpicks in the glue a little.  Then hold it in place. Unlike my husband try to put the toothpick at an angle and against the bottle cap edge.

Instead of holding the toothpick while it drys, which takes FOREVER there’s a better option! This took me a while to figure out, but in the end it was a life saver.  Put a second bottle cap on top of the bottle cap/toothpick like so …

Let dry for at least 15 minutes.  The longer the better and depending on the glue you use they will dry at slower or faster rate than mine did.  Then stick it into the cupcake and away you go.  I think it would have been nice to have a few more different types of beer bottle caps, but over all I am very pleased with how they turned out!  Check out the little display:

The color theme of the surprise party was yellow and chocolate brown.  The cupcake liners had yellow stripes on them.  You can find them here and they are pretty cheap and come in a lot of different colors.

Remember how much I wanted to use barbershop straws again? I got them for the surprise party!!  The other small decoration included brown and yellow balloons.

Oh and one more fun little detail for the party … custom napkins!  I had wanted to do custom napkins for our wedding, but it didn’t work out. I would never plan another party without custom napkins.  I love how they turned out!!

Surprise parties are so much fun and all the little tidbits and extra details all the difference in making the party look so cute.  :)

Happy DIY and party planning!

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