Who doesn't love chocolate? Everybody loves chocolate!! Do you know whats better than chocolate? Chocolate with peanut butter! Since we've been having some cold weather of late, oh summer how I wish that you hadn't stood me up, I had a craving for something sweet, hot and rich. So naturally I turned to the good old chocolate fondant. But the plain old chocolate fondant just wasn't doing it for me anymore, so I decided to make it a little more interesting by adding a little peanut butter to the centers so when you dig in a volcano of peanut butter spurts out of the middle. My grand visions certainly didn't turn out that way, but it was pretty satisfying nonetheless.
To make the peanut butter center, I keep aside a little of the chocolate mixture and then add a generous amount of peanut butter to that. Then I put the peanut butter/chocolate mixture into the middle of the 2/3 filled ramekins. The peanut butter changes the consistency of the chocolate batter, instead of ending up with a very fluid lava like center the peanut butter makes it all a bit thick. So the centers stay soft and gooey, but not as runny as I would like. I think it needs a bit of tweaking. Anyway here is the recipe and a video to tease you with.
Peanut butter Chocolate Fondants
INGREDIENTS
Makes 4
100g good quailty dark chocolate
100g unsalted butter
2 eggs
2 egg yolks
50g castor sugar
30g plain flour
2 tbsp crunchy peanut butter
extra butter and cocoa powder
METHOD
Preheat oven to 180C
In a double boiler, melt together the chocolate and butter, set aside and allow to cool slightly. In a separate bowl whisk together the eggs, yolks and castor sugar until light and fluffly roughly 2-3 minutes on medium speed.
Combine the chocolate into the eggs, then fold through the flour. Using 1 cup capacity ramekins, grease the outside with a little butter, then dust the grease with some cocoa powder, this will prevent the batter from sticking. Spoon the mixture into the ramekins, about 2/3 of the way full. Add the peanut butter to the remaining chocolate mixture, mix until just combined. Divide this evenly into the 4 ramekins, making sure to get the peanut butter mixture as close to the center of the ramekin as possible.
Bake for 12 minutes at 180C
The mixture can be made ahead of time and kept in the fridge in the ramekins, when baking adjust the cooking time by 2-3 minutes to compensate for the cold mixture.
