I’m in Valentine’s Day mode.
Fresh berries, red wine, an exorbitant amount of dark chocolate…
Really, I guess that’s my everyday mode. 🙂
But honestly what’s the point of waiting until February 14th? This quick chocolate lava cake is easy to make, secretly good for you, and deliciously rich.
To make it even more delicious, top it with my homemade Healthy Chocolate Sauce.
Upon breaking into the cake, you will find a gorgeous pink berry filling that pours out like molten lava.
It’s much too good to save for once a year.
Chocolate Lava Cake In A Mug
Adapted from the reader favorite “One Minute” Chocolate Mug Cake
- 3 tbsp spelt, all-purpose, or Bob’s gf flour
- 1 tbsp plus 1 tsp dutch or unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp baking powder
- 2 tsp sugar of choice or xylitol
- pinch stevia or 1 extra tbsp sugar of choice
- 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 3 tbsp milk of choice
- 2 1/2 tsp vegetable or coconut oil (Although I don’t personally like the cake when applesauce is subbed for the oil, many commenters do think it tastes good this way. Sub at your own risk.)
- 2 tbsp mashed raspberries or raspberry jam (If using the raspberries, feel free to mix in a little of your favorite sweetener.)
- small handful mini chocolate chips, optional
If using the oven, preheat to 350F. Grease a small dish or 1-cup ramekin. In a separate small bowl, combine first 6 ingredients and stir very well. Add the oil, vanilla, and milk and stir to form a batter. Spoon half the batter into the greased dish, spoon the raspberries and optional chocolate chips on top (only in the middle of the batter), then top off with remaining chocolate batter. Either microwave 30-40 seconds or bake 13-14 minutes. If you don’t want to eat it straight out of the dish, be sure to wait for it to cool before trying to remove the cake.
View Lava Cake Nutrition Facts
If desired, top with any of my 30+ Healthy Frosting Recipes.
Consider my day made. This looks so good!
I love your single serving recipes! If it’s not cookies, or something that can easily freeze, I don’t like to make too much, otherwise I end up eating half the pan. 🙂
Would chocolate syrup or chocolate spread (like nutella) work in the center as “lava” instead of berries?
I don’t know about chocolate syrup (if you’re talking about something like the Hersheys in a squeeze bottle,) since it might be too runny/thin. Nutella is close to the same consistency of jam, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. Also, I was reading the comments and noticed that someone recommended melting chocolate chips or a chocolate bar and using that if you want a plain chocolate filling.
I’m in Canada and I’m not certain about the availability of this where you are, but President’s Choice in the Super Store chain, makes a topping for ice cream called Old Fashioned Dark Chocolate in 355 ml jar.
It’s intended for dessert topping or on ice cream. It does have milk ingredients in it and they use corn syrup for sweetener, but it is very thick. I’m willing to bet that you could drop a spoonful into your mug cake and get a successful result. It must be heated in order for it to pour.
Holy yumminess, Katie. You had me at lava cake, but… gorgeous pink berry filling?! I’m all about it. Might just have to make this treat for my Valentine 🙂 xo
Hi Katie – does the nutritional info include mashed raspberries or raspberry jam? Thanks!
Sounds so tasty filled with berries instead of just chocolate, like a normal lava cake.
This looks incredible!
True story: Molten Lava Cake is one of my favorites.
Looks delish! I just made your Guinness brownies and they were a huge hit! Thanks 🙂
This looks fantastic!!!
Hi, Katie – why is the sugar content different in the two versions, also where does all that fiber come from?
The sugar content is higher for the cake without oil because applesauce is subbed in, which has (natural) sugar in it. Spelt flour is high in fiber.
Love this idea! How do you think coconut flour would work in the batter?
I just made this with coconut flour! I used only 1 1/2 tbsp of flour and I used 1/8 of baking soda instead (I’m trying to not eat grains for health reasons). I did everything else the same (included the oil). It may need less filling. I only used maybe 5-6 defrosted mixed berries and I just sort of pushed the dough around it. It may need to cook longer based on your microwave and the level of done-ness you want. It comes out so fluffy, like a soufflé!
Note: if you didn’t want to include the oil, you could try apple cause or mashed banana but ou may need to add more milk.
I made mine with oat flour and and it is the most decadent thing I have eaten in a long time. It was thick and moist…marvelous!!!
Me too! I used oat flour and not much sugar – tiny bit of Xylitol – it was fabulous!
Hi Katie,
I’m in love with your recipes, especially because I am allergic to wheat and lactose-intolerant so using spelt flour and almond milk are good for me! I’m newly sugar-free too (trying to kill the yeast!!) and I’m confused about the extra sweetener addition you have in a lot of recipes… Like usually it’s a set amount of sugar of choice then an extra hit of stevia (or more sweetener of choice). What would be your sugar to stevia substitution amount if stevia was the only sweetener? I’ve seen different amounts and I don’t want it to be too sweet!
Thanks and keep up the good work 🙂
Oh dear, I hope you haven’t been fed that myth about candida overgrowth and needing to cut out sugar (and perhaps yeast) to stop feeding it? It’s just not how stuff works – candida is commonly part of the normal mixture of bugs that live in us, but its numbers are mostly kept in check by the other organisms. It usually only infects locally (e.g diaper rash, vaginal thrush), but may cause widespread and serious disease in someone who is immunosuppressed, e.g. due to chemotherapy or HIV/AIDS. But “candida overgrowth” seems to be this crazy belief/diagnosis that the woo-meisters have, and the misinformation makes me ragey. A medical doctor with critical thinking skills would likely be much more helpful for you.
Sorry, Darling, sugar burns everything it touches, and CANCELS all HCL acid in the stomach, so critical for disinfecting and digesting. Indeed, cancer and candida do indeed tend to starve to death when you deny them sugar. Medical doctors are WONDERFUL for acute care, but only a fool goes to an MD for chronic care: MD’s receive zero training for healing, only surgery and drugs… and emergency care, which they’re great at. Learn more, please before misleading that poor lady. Respectfully submitted.
Joan, I can see you feel strongly enough about this to use a very condescending tone, but you make some very bold claims that are often trotted out by the woo-peddlers, without any science to support them. Perhaps you could include the chemical equations for how sugar “cancels” hydrochloric acid in the stomach? And some citations on how the absence of sugar (what kind of carbohydrate are you actually referring to) “starves” cancer and candida “to death”? Does it have the same effect for all types of cancer – they’re not all the same, after all.
I’d like to suggest applying the same level of skepticism towards the alternative “medicine” practitioners that you do towards actual medical doctors. The sense of being able to thumb your nose at the medical establishment, and having some sort of secret “knowledge” they don’t must be enjoyable, but it is at the expense of facts, I’m afraid. I hope the myths they have sold you weren’t too expensive.
I LOVE how so many of your recipes are a single serving. I can’t be trusted with an entire pan of anything around the house. This is such a good way to satisfy your sweet tooth without killing your day!
I was completely fooled when I first saw this, thinking it was a multiple-serving cake. NEIN, it’s a single-serve which makes this recipe 1000 times better! Unfortunately, I have to be on a low fat and low fiber diet, so I’ll have to ponder what to use as my filling instead of the raspberries.
Maybe chunkily-mashed bananas?
One can never tire of bananas.
How did you know this is what I needed today!?
I love hot lava cake. I am going to try to fill mine with raspberries and hot chocolate butter!
Love it! But do you have to put raspberries in it?
Hi, I hope you don’t mind me chiming in, but without the raspberries, this is really just Katie’s original chocolate mug cake, which she linked to in the recipe. So, basically the answer is no, you don’t have to put the raspberries in.
Wow, that raspberry filling looks ridiculously awesome! Like a delicious volcano!!!
Just made this – absolutely delicious! I usually don’t like the taste when I use applesauce instead of oil but I gave it a shot and it was fabulous:) Keep the single recipes coming, I love it!
Just made this using raspberry jam! I completely forgot how good that combo can be! Like a giant viva-puff!!