How an Italian chef made a chocolate lava cake with Russian Borodinsky bread (RECIPE) 

Chef Christian Lorenzini from Tuscany has managed the kitchens of famous Moscow restaurants for almost 20 years. In 2013, he fulfilled his dream and opened his namesake restaurant, Christian. His magnificent dishes combine Tuscan culinary traditions, as well as his own innovations and techniques. 

Sometimes, the chef experiments with Russian ingredients – for example, Christian prepared a chocolate lava cake made with dried Borodinsky bread for the Russian Restaurant Festival this fall. This recipe also uses rye flour with the addition of wheat flour, rye malt, sugar, molasses and coriander. Due to its dark color, as well as a slightly sweet taste and spicy aroma, the bread partially substitutes chocolate in this cake. 

This unusual ingredient for a chocolate lava cake doesn’t remove the joy one feels from the liquid center, for which this dessert is so loved around the world. Ice cream, made from sour cream, gives a delightful freshness. 

Borodinsky lava cake with sour cream ice cream 

'Christian' Restaurant

Ingredients (for one cake): 

• 3.5% Fat content milk – 20 ml 
• 20% Fat content sour cream – 40 g 
• Powdered milk – 2 g
• Sugar – 16 g
• Glucose powder — 2 g
• Butter – 20 g
• Eggs – 3 units
• Corn starch – 4 g
• Borodinsky bread – 10 g
• Icing sugar – 5 g
• Maple syrup to taste 

Preparation:

1. First, prepare the base for the sour cream ice cream: bring the milk to a boil, take it off the heat and add powdered milk, 10 g of sour cream and glucose powder. All ingredients should be mixed well and cooled.  

2. Then add another 10 g of sour cream and mix. The resulting mass should sit in the fridge for five hours. After that, you need to move the cooled mixture to an ice cream maker and then put it in the freezer. 

3. To prepare the lava cake, you need to thinly slice Borodinsky bread and dry it in the oven for 40 minutes at 90°C. Then, to obtain the proper flour texture, crush the rusks in a coffee grinder. 

4. Whip together room-temperature butter and sugar in a mixer at medium speed. Add egg yolks and sour cream, stir the ingredients with a plastic spatula until smooth.  

5. After, add maple syrup, starch and Borodinsky crumbs through a sieve and mix again. Whip the egg whites and slowly incorporate them into the previous mixture. 

6. Butter single-use molds, put them in the freezer for five minutes and repeat this procedure. Then, place 80 g of your dough into each mold and freeze. 

7. Before serving, bake the lava cake for 10 minutes at 180°C. Then, remove it from the mold; place it in the middle of a dish and sprinkle it with icing sugar.  

8. Finally, roll a quenelle or a scoop of ice cream and place it next to the lava cake. You can pour some maple syrup on the ice cream and, if desired, sprinkle it with flower pollen.

READ MORE: How chocolate appeared in Russia

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