2/₃ cup semisweet chocolate chips

or

4 ounces (4 squares) semisweet baking chocolate

about 1 cup all-purpose or medium cream*

1 whole egg, and 2 egg yolks** (U.S. graded "large")

4 ramekins*** with ½ cup capacity, and a baking dish to hold them

long spoon, measuring cup, saucepan, aluminum foil, oven, stove, sieve (filter)

boiling water

optional: 2 to 3 Tablespoons (Tb) sugar (I used 2½)

optional: 1½ Tb dark Jamaican rum (better not, if you bring it to school…)

about 2-3 hours to make 16: above supplies are enough for only four****

1. Preheat oven to 350° F.
2. Put chocolate in a measuring cup
3. Add cream to the 1½ cup mark
4. Pour into saucepan on low heat (your lowest setting: chocolate burns easily)
5. Stir until chocolate completely dissolves
6. Optional: put in sugar until it tastes good to you
7. Mix the egg and yolks just enough to mix them well
8. Pour onto the chocolate mixture in a thin stream (thin, to avoid scrambled egg: the thinner the better. Try stirring the sauce while you add the eggs)
9. Optional: assuming you aren’t bringing it to school, stir in the rum
10. Pour everything through a sieve (filter) back into a measuring cup
11. Pour into ramekins, equally
12. Remove all foam and bubbles with a spoon (to avoid airholes)
13. Put ramekins in the baking dish
14. Fill the baking dish with boiling water to 2/3 the height of the ramekins (be careful not to splash water into the bowls. This can also be hard when you put them into the oven. If you can’t see the height, try using a ruler or wooden spoon to measure how far up the water comes)
15. Cover baking dish with aluminum foil (to prevent crusting custard tops)
16. Bake in lower third of oven for about 20 minutes (you’re supposed to regulate heat so the water never quite simmers. I left it at 350° F and it turned out pretty well. Overheating makes it granular, overcooking makes it separate when it cools. They’re done when they puff into slight domes but still tremble slightly. I stuck a toothpick into it and it came out slightly wet but not runny. I put them into separate containers, but its probably best to leave them as they are. Refrigerate them until about 30 minutes or so before you eat them, unless you eat them right out of the oven)
17. Serve hot, warm, or chilled. Use lightly sweetened whipped cream if you like

*I used heavy whipping cream and mixed it with about 1½ cup half&half right at the beginning because I knew I wouldn’t have enough. At the end, I added less than ¹/₃ cup milk because I didn’t quite have the right amount. Note that I was making 16, and not 4, as the recipe calls for.

**To separate an egg yolk from its egg white, crack the egg down the middle over a bowl. Then, pour the egg yolk back and forth between the two shells until all the egg white has drained out. Then pour the egg yolk in a different bowl and put the shell in the garbage disposal. Note that in this recipe, you should do the two egg yolks first, so that if you mess up the first time, you can just use the egg you messed up with as the "1 whole egg". It’s hard, but not impossible, to scoop most of the egg yolks out with a spoon if you mess up again. However, it’s important not to let any shell spill into the bowl.

***Ramekins are small chocolate pots you can buy. I was lucky enough to have seven fist-sized glass bowls. Whatever you us, just don’t put plastic in the oven. Also, you need a big pan with steep sides to hold the bowls in a water bath. I happened to have two metal, rectangular pans (without handles) that were big enough for two bowls each. You’d be surprised what’s lying around, unused, in your kitchen.

****You can probably get away with doubling the recipe. I just did it four times, which might be easier, depending on how big your oven is.

Recipes and some advice paraphrased from:

The French Chef Cookbook, by Julia Child. Pg. 314. The 102^nd Show, Chop dinner for four in half an hour, "Petits Pots de Crème au Chocolat". ã 1968 by Julia Child. Published by Bantam Books, Inc, in New York, New York.