Chocolate fondant: ten minutes, and seconds decide it
A fondant has no secret ingredient keeping the middle liquid — it is an ordinary chocolate cake taken out of the oven before the centre has set. So the whole art is timing, and the margin for error is about 60 seconds: a minute short and it floods out raw, a minute long and you have a cupcake. Which is why the first time you bake one as a test and only then the rest.
Your own work in that: 20 min.
- Batter 20 min
- Chilling 20 min
- Baking 10 min
Step by step
0 / 6 doneMelt the chocolate with butter
Melt the broken chocolate and the butter in a bowl over steam, stirring until smooth and glossy. Take it off and cool to lukewarm. Hot chocolate poured into eggs would scramble them, leaving lumps in the batter.
Ingredients: 150 g dark chocolate, 70 % · 120 g butter · 3 pcs eggs · 80 g sugar · 50 g plain flour · 1 pinch salt
TipDon't melt chocolate in a microwave at full power. Overheated (above about 50 °C), it thickens, turns dull and grainy, and that cannot be undone.
Smooth and glossy, cooled to lukewarmWhisk the eggs with sugar
Whisk the eggs with the sugar and salt 4 minutes, until tripled in volume, pale, and falling from the whisk in a ribbon. That air, not baking powder, is what makes the edges rise and build a wall around the liquid centre.
Four minutes, falling in a ribbonCombine and fold in the flour
Pour the lukewarm chocolate into the eggs in three additions, folding with a spatula. Finally add the sifted flour and fold only until combined. The batter should be smooth and glossy; overmixing knocks the air out and the fondant will not rise.
Prepare the ramekins carefully
Butter four ramekins with upward vertical strokes, from base to rim, and dust with cocoa, tipping out the excess. Careful buttering from base to rim helps the batter rise evenly up the sides, and the fondant then turns out whole. Cocoa rather than flour — flour would leave white marks.
Ingredients: 20 g butter · 2 tbsp cocoa
Butter upwards, cocoa instead of flourFill and chill
Divide the batter between the ramekins, filling them three quarters full. Refrigerate 20 minutes (or up to 24 hours). A cold centre heats up more slowly than the edges, which widens the timing window considerably. Meanwhile, heat the oven to 210 °C.
Three quarters full, then the fridgeBake nine minutes and check
Bake in the preheated oven at 210 °C for 9 minutes. A fondant is ready when the edges are set and risen and the middle 2 cm still wobbles when you shake the ramekin. Wait a minute, run a knife round the edge and turn it out onto a plate.
Ingredients: 100 g raspberries · 1 tbsp icing sugar
TipOvens can differ by 10–20 degrees. Bake <b>one as a test</b>, check it, and only then the rest — the remaining batter waits happily in the fridge.
Edges set, the middle 2 cm still wobbling
Before you start
With a surprise inside
Push a square of white chocolate or a teaspoon of peanut butter into the batter before baking. It melts and flows out with the chocolate, giving two colours on the plate.
Made ahead
Filled ramekins keep up to a day in the fridge, which is this dessert's great virtue: with guests at the table all that remains is to put them in the oven. Add 1 minute to the baking time then.
Which chocolate
60 % minimum, ideally 70 %. Milk chocolate has too much sugar and milk and too little cocoa — a fondant made with it is bland, cloying and barely holds its shape.
It came out as cake
Cut 60–90 seconds from the next attempt. It cannot be fixed after the fact, but one minute really is the whole difference — that is this entire recipe.
