Chocolate Lava Cakes, Chocolate Lava Cakes with Pistachio Cream

So, today was Day 29 of cooking from THE BEST OF COOKING LIGHT and I ended up making this for dessert tonight. This was supposed to be our Valentine's Day dessert, and you absolutely must go with a rich chocolate for Valentine's Day, so I went with the Chocolate Lava Cakes in the cookbook. However, we were so full after eating all the other food I made for Valentine's Day we did not have room for dessert, so I kept these in the fridge ready to put in the oven and eat at a later date, which, fortunately for us, happened to be tonight. Here's what we thought of them....

CHOCOLATE LAVA CAKES WITH PISTACHIO CREAM, DIVINE!!!!!!!!!!

You're supposed to make the chocolate cake batter and put it in muffin tins and refrigerate for 2 hours. Since I was making these for Valentine's Day I made them in heart shaped ramekins, and since we were too full to eat them on Valentine's Day I ended up refrigerating them for 2 days instead of 2 hours. In lieu of that, and because of our altitude, and that the ramekins were slightly larger than a muffin cup, I let these bake for an extra 2 minutes, which was slightly too long; 1 extra minute would have been perfect. They weren't quite a ooey gooey as they could have been. They were slightly gooey, but could have had a little more ooze to the chocolate "lava".

I did have a hard time getting them out of the ramekins. I think brushing the ramekins (or muffin tins) with melted butter would have helped them to come out easier than just spraying the pans with non stick cooking spray. However, a little run of the knife around the edges and I was able to get them out.

The flavors of these cakes were absolutely delicious. You ground up pistachios to make a pistachio butter, which was remarkable. You used some of it in the cake, and the remainder in the pistachio cream that went with it. The sauce really looked disgusting, to be quite frank, it looked much like split pea soup (or baby poop as my daughter said), but the flavor was absolutely divine. My husband wanted me to load his up with lots of sauce, he wanted it drenched in the sauce.

I am not really sure how these are "light", but apparently they are, at just 232 calories each, and with 7.7 grams of fat each, they're not too terribly bad for you. For a rich, decadent, chocolate dessert, these are heaven!

So, would I make these again? ABSOLUTELY! and probably will. I have the other 8 in my freezer to make for our Bed and Breakfast guests. We serve a 3-course breakfast and always serve a dessert for breakfast as well. I think these will go over quite well.

54 recipes down, 493 more to go.