Cake – How to make a cover for a molten cake

I blame the recipe, which calls for absurdly long mixing times, well past the point of overmixing.

After you add the wet ingredients, the recipe has you mix for:

• 30 seconds at low speed for the milk
• 30 seconds at medium speed for the milk
• An unspecified amount of time at low speed to incorporate the first egg
• 2 minutes at medium speed for all the eggs (30 seconds after each)

That is simply way too much mixing for a cake. Personally, I don't even like the concept of using an electric mixer at all, except to cream the butter. But that's over 3 minutes of mixing and it is simply too high. You'll end up with extremely tough, chewy cake, practically bread.

If you look at the top-rated from-scratch cake recipes on various recipe sites (e.g. Epicurious) you'll see that they all either call for incorporating the wet ingredients either by folding with a rubber spatula (best) or with an electric beater at low speed.

Beware of "manufacturer" recipes - I don't think I've ever had a positive experience with one. You would think that they are authoritative sources, but in practice you'll achieve much better results with a search engine and careful reading of the reviews.

Because the molten lava cake you have pictured from any restaurant isn't made up of cake. It's really a BROWNIE! That is why the different density and the difference in richness. I know. I make them in a high end restaurant in Wisconsin.