These days a search for popular foods will bring up hundreds of similar recipes, and truthfully they are not all good.
I just tried to make Chocolate Lava Cake, or Molten Lava Cake, or add all those words together – whatever. The recipe I followed was wrong, saying to bake at 450 degrees for 12 minutes.
My cakes had no runny chocolate middle because they were over done! So I have searched other similar recipes to see what they say.

Chocolate lava cakes, baked

Recently I purchased little ramekins for baking just this type of thing. My Emile Henry (blue dishes) and Staub baking dishes are all 8 ounces in size and I think it is the perfect size since the batter puffed up to the top.

I won’t link to the inaccurate recipe, but found another that may work better at Very Best Baking. But they don’t say what size ramekin to use! They should “hold 4 oz of batter” – not really helpful when the batter will be expanding. As I said above, I used 8 ounce size bowls.

I have not tried this new recipe, but the fact that they say “bake for 7-8 minutes” makes me hopeful. Still they ask that the oven be set at 450 degrees and that seems high. Also they call for 4oz. of chocolate and I used 6oz., which seemed fine. The more chocolate the better, right?

In my Gordon Ramsey Makes it Easy cookbook, he also lists a Hot Chocolate Fondant, which is basically this chocolate cake, with a few changes, but his recipe is for 2 servings. He wants the oven set at 325 degrees and bake for 12 minutes, which in comparison, sounds good.

The cake is delicious even without the molten middle, so I will definitely try them again. This time I will follow Gordon’s recipe and baking time. After all, is Gordon ever wrong?
And I will update this page with my results.

Online recipes are not always to be believed. Too many food sites make things up and never try baking the recipes themselves. We have to be careful and sensible when using online recipes, and sometimes they just need a minor adjustment to be good. Sometimes just reading the comments from people who have already adjusted for the mistakes is very helpful.