During this year’s Doctoral Wellbeing Fortnight, we asked Doctoral Researchers to contribute towards our PHooD blog series (PhD + Food = PHooD!) by sharing their ‘go-to’ recipes that are tasty and either quick to make and/or nutritious and/or cheap and/or comforting… enjoy!

Chocolate Fondant/Lava Cake – Recipe by Katrina Duncumb

The nutritiousness of these could definitely be debated, but they are comforting and delicious. They are my ‘go to’ if I want something chocolately, that’s not just chocolate, and they are ready really quickly (probably even quicker if you own a microwave, and are comfortable melting chocolate in one).

Ingredients (Serves 2)

• 60g Unsalted Butter (+ a little extra to grease the tins)
• 60g Dark Chocolate
• 1 Egg
• 1 Egg yolk (all together this is about 60g of egg, if that helps)
• 60g Caster Sugar
• 30g Plain Flour
• Pinch of Salt
• Cocoa Powder for dusting

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 200°C.
2. Grease two ramekins, and dust the entire inside with cocoa powder, and pop these on a tray (believe me they’re hard to get out the oven if you don’t).
3. Melt the butter an dark chocolate together in a bowl over a pan of boiling water. The bowl should not touch the water, or you can burn your chocolate. Feel free to melt in a microwave instead (the internet recommends 30s seconds at a time, stirring after each round).
4. Whisk together the egg and sugar till pale in colour.
5. Add the melted chocolate mixture in slowly and continue to whisk till combined.
6. Fold in the flour and salt.
7. Once combined divide evenly between the two ramekins, and bake for 12-14mins. They should be a little gooey in the middle to be a fondant, so they’re done when the top edge pulls away from the ramekin, but it still jiggles a little. If it’s left too long, you still get a rich chocolate cake, and that’s no bad thing either.

These do lend themselves to having berries added to the mix (around 5-6 raspberries work well between the two ramekins), and can be served with cream, ice cream, or custard.