Chocolate Hot Lava Cake

My children are kind of picky about candy and treats.  I mean, when I was a kid I ate anything that even looked like candy.  My girls don’t like a lot of kinds of candy, which, by the way is very okay with me!  The kinds like nerds, sweetarts, smarties, dum-dums, lemonheads, pixie stix etc… are usually rejected.  They usually get sorted out and trashed on Halloween night.  Last year, after Halloween, my younger girls made “sand art” with the pixie stix dust and glued lemonheads and nerds all over paper, in a very artistic way, of course.  The “good” stuff gets sorted, counted, organized, traded, saved, fought over, and eventually savored.  The “good” stuff usually amounts to a pile of chocolate.  My girls seem to love chocolate, which is strange because I really don’t.  I try to make desserts with fruits and other flavors like caramel and molasses but chocolate always seems to win in the end.  So, my challenge was to make something semi-healthy using chocolate.  This dessert is a cross between brownies and hot fudge.  It makes a chocolate brownie crust on the top while hiding a lava pool of dark chocolate underneath.  Let  me warn you, it’s very rich!  Even my chocolate-loving eight-year old maxed out after just half a serving.  Serve it warm with some low-fat ice cream or whipped cream, but just beware of a chocolate-induced coma!

Blend together in a mixing bowl, beat until smooth:

¾  cups white sugar

1 cup all-purpose flour

3 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

2 tsp. baking powder

¼ tsp. salt

½ cup milk

2 Tablespoons butter or margarine

1 ½  tsp. vanilla extract

Pour this batter into an ungreased 8 or 9-inch square baking dish

In a separate, small bowl combine:

½ cup white sugar

½ cup brown sugar

4 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

 Sprinkle this mixture evenly over the batter in the dish.  Then, pour 1 ¼ cup hot water over the top.  Do not stir, just bake at 350 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes or until the center is almost set.  Remove the cake from the oven and let it stand for about 15 minutes. (if you can wait that long!)  Spoon into dessert dishes and add some ice cream or whipped cream, you’re not going to believe this is low-fat!