- Hello, I'm Wolfgang Puck
and today I'm going to show you the best chocolate cake.
It's served warm, it's oozing out the hot chocolate
from the inside.
Serve it with a little unsweetened whipped cream
and maybe some berries and a little powdered sugar.
It's a three star restaurant in your own home.
And here we go, let me show you how to do it.
I always use chocolate, minimum 65% cocoa,
which means it dark, bittersweet chocolate.
Look what I have here, a chocolate 82%.
It gives you the chocolate flavor.
We're gonna get the stainless bowl
and I'm gonna add eight ounces of chocolate.
Add eight ounces of butter to my chocolate.
Be sure it's not a salted butter.
And now we're gonna melt it all together
over boiling water right here.
Put a pot on the fire, bring it to a boil,
and put your chocolate right on top.
The butter and chocolate will melt together.
While the chocolate is melting, I'm gonna prepare my eggs.
I need four whole eggs and three egg yolks.
Keep your eggs outside for an hour before.
You can whisk them better, okay?
Now you'll hit it and separate it.
Four eggs and three egg yolks.
See that, how I crack it here and then with my thumb,
I just separate it like that.
And now I'm gonna show you how to separate the egg yolks
from the egg white.
Crack it open a little bit and then you separate
the two halves and then you go back and forth
with your egg yolk and put the egg whites on the side.
Just add the yolk.
If you have egg whites left over like that,
make yourself an egg white frittata in the morning
or an egg white omelet.
We don't throw anything away.
Let's look into our chocolate here.
See the butter and the chocolate are starting to melt.
Can you see that?
While the chocolate is melting,
I'm gonna add four ounces of sugar to my eggs here.
I'm gonna whisk it with the hand mixer.
This is a hand mixer, can you see that, my hand?
It's a hand mixer.
You also can use a stand mixer.
It doesn't have to be really fluffy.
All you want to do is be sure that the sugar
has melted into the eggs.
So if you have little mixer, you can do it.
If not, ask Andrew to come to your house and he will mix it.
Where's Andrew? He left me already, huh?
All right, I told everybody out there you're gonna come
to their house.
- Okay. - Okay, good.
All right, here we go.
Put it on high-speed.
- I'm tired today.
- You get tired at your age?
Now we're gonna spray our molds
with a little non-stick.
You also can use butter and the little flour,
but the non-stick spray works perfect.
I use that all the time in my kitchen.
All right, continue, don't be tired again.
- I'm working, I'm working! - Okay, you're very slow.
Look how beautiful.
Now keep the kids away from that because they will eat it
before you can make your cake.
I know that's what we did as kids in my home
when my mother was making a chocolate cake,
we ate half of the chocolate before she could make the cake.
My butter and my chocolate are melted.
Now we're gonna add the flour to my chocolate
and butter mixture here.
Two ounces of flour, mix it well together,
you don't have to worry.
You sift your flour before
so you won't have any lumps in here.
While you're doing that, be sure to preheat the oven
to about 350 degrees.
Okay, now, you can see here, it's a little foamy.
Our eggs and sugar are a little foamy.
Not too much.
You don't want too much air in there because, if not,
it rises up the chocolate cake and then it goes down again
and makes it very dense.
So don't overmix it.
I've tried many version of that.
I mixed it sometimes until it gets like a volume,
like a whole bowlful, but it's not good.
The chocolate is melted and now we always
put the hot into the cold, slowly.
Yeah, let's see.
I pour in the chocolate slowly into my egg mixture.
Get the rubber spatula and scrape
all the chocolate out of here.
At home, if you want to, you can add a little booze to it.
A little bourbon, a little rum.
What what should we put in here?
- [Andrew] I think a little whiskey shot.
- Whiskey?
So if you invite Andrew to your house,
have a little bourbon ready.
Okay, little shot of whiskey for Andrew.
Okay and out of it.
Mmm, I can smell it already, the aroma of the whiskey.
Good idea, Andrew.
- Thank you. - A little bourbon in here.
With the little ladle, I'm gonna fill up my molds.
It depends how much you like chocolate cakes,
you fill it up with much.
Or you can make smaller cakes and fill it up half.
If you don't fill them up, totally,
it just cooks a little faster.
Let's scrape everything out of here. No waste.
Separate them nicely so we have two, four, seven of them.
Now they oven is preheated to 350 degrees,
10 minutes, maybe 12, okay?
In the middle rack of your oven.
While my chocolate cakes are cooking,
I'm gonna make a little whipped cream.
I don't add any sugar to the whipped cream
because I like the balance.
The sweet chocolate cake and the whipped cream
just makes it even more complex.
Again, Andrew needs the exercise.
(Andrew laughs)
Why you're laughing? - How did I know?
- How did we know?
Our chocolate cake will take about 10 to 12 minutes,
but you'll have to check it once in a while, okay?
After five minutes, six minutes, check it.
Andrew did a great job with the whipped cream here,
look at it, perfectly!
You don't wanna over-whip it,
because then you'll get butter.
This is just perfect here.
Now, keep it cold, okay?
You don't wanna have it sit outside.
I love whipped cream, mmm.
Let's check it, the chocolate cake.
All right, you can see the chocolate cake is not ready,
but it starts to cook.
You look at that on the side here,
but the inside, look at that.
It's totally liquid still. It needs another five minutes.
The first time I made this recipe
was at Chinois in 1984.
After 10 years, I said, you know, this is boring.
I do the same thing all the time.
I took it off the menu.
You know what the guests said?
The first one who comes in and says,
"I'll have my usual, my warm chocolate cake."
And I said, "Sorry, we don't have it anymore."
Called me over to the table and says,
"Why you don't have the chocolate cake anymore?"
I said, "Well, I got bored of doing the same thing."
And he said, "You know what?
If I'm not bored of eating it,
you shouldn't be bored of making it."
And I said, "You know what, you're right."
I went in the kitchen and it has always been
on the menu since.
All right, our time's up.
See that the center is still undercooked.
If you overcook it, no big deal.
Now we're gonna let it cool for five minutes.
We wanna serve the cake warm,
but we don't wanna unmold it while it's really hot.
It might fall apart.
And now we're going to show you how to unmold the cake.
We're lucky we had this spray,
so if it's still hot, use a towel.
If it's not too hot, you just put the plate on top
and you turn it over.
Now, look at that. How easy, how simple?
Presentation is always important.
So look, just a chocolate cake.
Well, it's brown, it looks good.
But add a little color around.
Also the color is important to me, but also the flavor.
So the acidity of the berries go really well
with the sweetness and richness of the chocolate cake.
You know, a lot of chefs today try
to make these huge plates and put the little food
in the middle or on the side.
I like to have a plate which fits right with my cake.
I always serve it with whipped cream.
You can see we have a perfect cream here
and then we take a spoonful of that.
We put it on top.
A little powdered sugar.
And here we go, our perfect chocolate cake.
But the surprise is inside.
Now come in close here, look at that, see that?
That's exactly the right way, perfectly cooked.
You can do that at home. It's simple and easy.
You can make it in advance and then just heat it up
for a few minutes and you're gonna
have the perfect chocolate cake each time.
And everybody loves that dessert.
Perfect.
The dark chocolate makes all the difference.
So there you have it, my favorite chocolate cake,
and it will be your favorite chocolate cake too.
If you wanna know more about me,
check out Wolfgang, the Documentary on Disney+.
(jazzy music)