Molten Chocolate Souffle and Lava Cakes

The first time I tried a chocolate souffle cake was on my honeymoon in Hawaii at Roy's. It was amazing. So, I had high hopes for this cake. I really wanted to be able to recreate something similar to that one:

But, I ran into a couple problems and just didn't have the time to fix them. I made the ganache Saturday night. I wanted to use a sweeter chocolate than what the recipe called for, but I was afraid it would effect the consistency of the ganache balls so I stuck with the bittersweet. I poured it into an egg carton lined with plastic wrap. I was tempted to use something else because this seemed to be a bit of a pain, but I decided I should follow the directions. I even weighed as I poured.

Then Sunday afternoon I was running a little late and only had an hour and 15 minutes to finish them before I was going to meet a friend to go bike riding, but I really wanted to get them done so we could taste them after dinner. I got all of the ingredients out and started making the batter. I went the quick route with melting the chocolate and just did that in the microwave. After reading others blogs I had decided to substitute semi-sweet chocolate for the bittersweet in the batter. Everything was going okay until I pulled the ganache out of the fridge and realized that it hadn't firmed up at all. I stuck it in the freezer for about 15 minutes, but that really wasn't enough time to fix it. But, with only 10 minutes left to get out the door I just went with it and put what I could on top of the batter. Most of it just stuck to the plastic wrap.

Then my husband stepped in and helped with pulling them out of the oven when they were done and putting them in the fridge so that I could still get in a bike ride. Given my issues with the ganache I would say they turned out okay, but there really wasn't much lava to them. I will definitely have to give these a second chance though. Next time I will make them sweeter and try Raymond's method of just scooping out the ganache with a melon baller instead of dealing with the stupid plastic wrap and emptying out a carton of eggs.