Slow Cooker Chocolate Lava Cake

In light of having stuffed my face with potato skins, queso fundido, chips, and buffalo chicken bites on Super Bowl Sunday, I made the conscious decision to have a healthier week this week.

My weekly shopping trip resulted in a cart full of veggies, breakfast smoothie ingredients and healthy dinner items.

Then I found a recipe for a Chocolate Lava Cake made in the crockpot and suddenly my week looked far less healthy. You can’t pass up chocolate lava cake, especially if its as easy as letting it spend some time in a slow cooker.

For this recipe, there’s really just three main steps: mixing up a chocolate cake batter, layering on an “instant pudding” mix, and topping it off with chocolate chips. It was entirely worth it.  At first I wasn’t so sure that the cake would rise up and swallow up the chocolate pudding (making it a lava cake), but it actually worked!

For the cake batter, just put a box of chocolate cake mix into a bowl along with milk, vegetable oil and eggs.

Don’t be like me… get all the cake mix into the bowl :)

(Side note, do you know how to test for egg freshness?

Sunken eggs… still fresh.

I have a funny story about how I accidentally left the refrigerator open all night a few days ago, but I’ll save it for another day. Point is, it left me questioning my egg’s freshness. Anyway, just [gently] drop the eggs in some water. If they float, they’re bad. If they sink, still good! )

Pour the batter into the slow cooker after you’ve beaten it up.

Next, mix up the pudding with milk and then gently pour it on top of the cake batter, but don’t mix or stir it together!

Next, sprinkle on the chocolate chips (I used semi-sweet, but you could choose another kind).

Finally, place the lid on top and let it work its magic for about 2.5 hours.

After some patience, the cake will have risen up around the pudding and chocolate chips and you’ll have a nice spongy cake top and sides, with a gooey chocolate lava center.

See the little cracks in the top? That’s the lava beneath it. This was at about 2.5 hours, I probably could have let it go for another half hour or so, but my patience had worn thin.

Top it off with whip cream (of course I had chocolate whip cream) and enjoy!

I apologize for the non-artsy final photo. I really, really just wanted to eat this cake.

Ingredients

Cake:

1 box Betty Crocker™ SuperMoist™ triple chocolate fudge cake mix

1 1/4 cups milk

1/2 cup vegetable oil

3 eggs

Topping:

1 box (4-serving size) instant chocolate pudding and pie filling mix

2 cups milk

1 bag semi-sweet chocolate chips