Halloween Candy Lava Cakes

When you have fun sized Halloween candies left over after the trick-or-treating is through, the obvious thing to do is to simply eat it yourself over time. As good as those tiny candies are, however, they get boring after a while. I like to put mine to good use in other baked goods and these Halloween Candy Lava Cakes are one of the absolute best ways to use them up.

Chocolate lava cakes, also known as molten center chocolate cakes, have a gooey chocolate center that oozes out of the cake when it is served. They’re decadent, and always a hit with chocoholics. Typically, I put a chocolate truffle at the center of each cake before baking. The truffles melt in the oven and ooze out of the warm, baked cakes and leave you with a very rich molten cake. For this Halloween variation, I placed squares of Halloween candies – mini Snickers, Milky Way, Milky Way Midnight, Caramel Snickers, Peanut Butter Snickers, etc. – inside of my lava cake batter before baking. The results were delicious! Those tiny candies added some fun flavors to the cakes because they have such diverse fillings. Some added caramel, while others added chocolate, nougat or peanut butter. The cakes themselves are very tender and  have a rich dark chocolate flavor.

I recommend looking for the square mini candy bars for this recipe, as they fit perfectly into the muffin cups. If you have the “fun size” candy bars, which are rectangular, you should cut them in half to form two squares before adding them in. You can really use any kind of candy, but bars with softer fillings tend to give you the best molten cake effect. I really liked Snickers bars (bottom picture), which add a salty peanut and caramel combination to the cakes, and Milky Way Midnights, which have a marshmallowy filling (top picture).

Halloween Candy Lava Cakes
4 oz. dark chocolate, coarsely chopped
3 tbsp unsalted butter, room temperature
2 large eggs, room temperature
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 tsp salt
1 tbsp all purpose flour
6 miniature, square chocolate candy bars
(or Fun size bars cut into squares)

Preheat oven to 400F. Butter a 6-cup muffin tin and dust each well with cocoa powder.
In a small bowl, melt together 4-oz chocolate and the butter. Set aside to cool for a few minutes.
In a large bowl, combine the eggs, sugar, vanilla and salt. Beat with an electric mixer until the mixture triples in volume and is very thick (about 5-7 minutes).
Sift flour over egg mixture and fold in. Add cooled chocolate/butter mixture and fold in until batter is uniform.
Divide batter evenly into prepared muffin tins.
Press one mini candy into the center of each cake. Use a knife or small spatula to ensure that it is covered with batter.
Bake for 9-11 minutes, until the tops are set. Let cakes cool in pan for 5 minutes before running a knife around the edge of each cake and turning them out onto a flat surface.
Serve immediately on individual plates.

Serves 6.