Food, Wine

Just a Little Chocolate Cake

It’s all yours: Whether you’re cooking for a sweetheart, a romantic prospect or the whole family on February 14, these petite sweets will earn you a standing ovation. Everybody loves chocolate cake, and with this recipe, everybody can have their own. Welcome or not with such a dreamy dessert, portion control is a good thing.

These moist miniature cakes soar to greatness with a red wine raspberry sauce. Chocolate and raspberries are proven soul mates, as happy together as wine and cheese, but you’re going to find many other uses for this silky sauce. Drizzle over pound cake, panna cotta or vanilla ice cream. In summer, enjoy with peaches and yogurt. On Sunday morning, with French toast, waffles, blintzes or pancakes. You deserve it.

Your Valentine’s Day plans are probably a little different this year. If you typically go out for dinner with your partner, you may need to offer a rain check. Restaurants will certainly welcome your business as they re-open. For now, consider placing a takeout order with a favorite establishment for Valentine’s Day but baking your own luscious dessert. Chocolate, naturally. It’s the language of romance. Alice Medrich, the California chocolate expert and author, often compares fine chocolate to fine wine. Both have complex aromas and character that reflect where the cacao or the grapes were grown—the so-called terroir or “taste of place” that makes both products so fascinating.

COVERED IN COLOR

That lush winter carpet of grasses and blooms between California vine rows is not there for looks. It’s a hardworking cover crop, planted in the fall and bursting forth with the first autumn rains. It holds soil in place, provides habitat for beneficial insects and improves soil fertility when tilled in the spring.

Vineyard managers select a cover crop to do what needs doing. Legumes add nitrogen, for example, while mustard inhibits soil-borne pests. Cover cropping is just one of many sustainable techniques that keep California vineyards healthy and an example for growers around the world.

The Pour

Which Wine?

A great dessert calls for a great dessert wine. Fortunately, California has you covered with styles ranging from extra-dry sparkling wine (you read right: “extra dry” implies that the bubbly is a bit sweet) to late-harvest Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon to port-style wines and sweet Muscats. As a rule of thumb, pair your dessert with a wine that has about the same level of sweetness. With this rich chocolate cake, go deep: a late-harvest white wine, even a late-harvest Zinfandel or Petite Sirah, will have the voluptuous sweetness to match.

Meet the Grapes: Explore more wine pairings

If you can’t imagine Valentine’s Day without chocolate, consider adding these mini-cakes to the menu. Served warm with red wine raspberry sauce, they are almost molten inside, with crunchy edges. The recipe makes four, so you can have one cake apiece with your sweetie and save the other pair for lunch the next day. When cool, they taste like a super-rich brownie.

Soft-Centered Chocolate Babycakes with Red Wine Raspberry Sauce

Ingredients

For the sauce:

½ cup dry red wine
¼ cup granulated sugar
½ pint (6 ounces) raspberries

For the cakes:

5 ounces (155 g) unsalted butter
5 ounces (155 g) bittersweet chocolate (65% to 75% cacao), chopped
2 teaspoons instant espresso or coffee powder
2 large whole eggs plus 1 egg white
¾ cup (185 g) granulated sugar
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
Pinch sea salt
½ cup (60 g) sifted all-purpose flour
Confectioner’s sugar for serving

Whipped cream or ice cream, optional

Directions

Prepare the sauce: Put the wine and sugar in a small saucepan and warm over medium-low heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Bring to a simmer and cook until reduced to 1/3 cup. Transfer to a small bowl, cover, and refrigerate several hours until cold. Set aside 1 dozen raspberries for garnish, then put the remainder in a small food processor or blender. Puree until smooth, then add the chilled red wine syrup and puree again. Pass the sauce through a fine-mesh sieve to remove the seeds, pressing firmly with a spatula.
Prepare the cakes: Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Butter and flour the insides of four 1-cup (250-ml) ramekins, shaking out excess flour.
Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium-low heat. Remove from the heat and add the chocolate and espresso powder. Let stand until the chocolate melts, then whisk to blend.
In another bowl, whisk together the eggs and egg white. Add the sugar gradually, whisking well. Add the vanilla and salt. Whisk until the sugar is no longer grainy. Add the chocolate mixture and whisk to blend. With a rubber spatula, gently fold in the flour.
Divide the batter evenly among the prepared ramekins. They will be about two-thirds full. Set them on a baking sheet and place in the oven. Bake until the cakes are well risen and mounded on top, with many surface cracks, 30 to 32 minutes.
Protecting your hands with oven mitts, immediately invert a cake onto an individual dessert plate, then quickly invert onto another dessert plate so that the cake is right side up. Repeat with the remaining cakes. Let cool for 5 minutes.
Spoon the red wine raspberry sauce around the warm cakes, dividing it evenly. Scatter the reserved raspberries on top of the sauce. Dust the surface of the cakes with confectioner’s sugar. Serve immediately, with whipped cream or ice cream, if desired.