There are so many good things about the recipe that I’m about to give you that I can’t even begin to start this post by focusing on only one. It’s chocolaty, which according to my brother John is the only way to do dessert. Its gluten free, which seems to be an increasing issue now days as people become more sensitive to the environment around them and it’s the most flexible recipe I think I’ve ever found, it’s the tardis of recipes.
This is hands down the most requested recipe I have, I have never once served it to anyone without them asking me for a copy, to have kept it away from you for so long almost makes me think I’ve been holding out. No longer gentle reader, here it is in all its glory.
I stumbled across this recipe originally some years ago when someone asked me for a flourless chocolate cake. When I’m looking for a recipe I want the least amount of ingredients I can get away with, you don’t want to have to go out and buy a heap of things and the less ingredients usually means that you can make it pretty quickly which is handy sometimes if you need to make something during the week. I tend to pare back recipes in any case to kind of tailor them to my own taste.
Normally I’d give you the recipe at the end but this has been an evolutionary kind of recipe so here is the recipe I started with.
Preheat your oven to 180 C and then in a heatproof bowl over simmering water melt 185 g of dark chocolate and 125 g of butter. Beat 5 egg whites and 1/3 cup of sugar until stiff peaks form. Beat the yolks with 2/3 cups of sugar until pale and creamy and then combine the melted chocolate and butter. Fold in 250g of ground almonds. By this point the mixture will be pretty stiff, start to combine the egg whites, the first spoonful will be to loosen the mix then the rest should be folded in gently.
I bake nearly all my cakes in spring form pans essentially because I don’t have any more room for extra kitchen stuff, I’m packed to the rafters with kitchen stuff, and for this recipe you’ll use a 22cm springform pan, line it even if it’s a non stick pan it’s just nice to have the extra insurance.
Spoon your mix into the pan and then bake for about 45 mins, check after about 30 mins because these things often depend on your oven.
I tend not to decorate these beyond a little icing sugar and maybe some berries because the cake speaks for itself but you knock yourself out.
So that was the first stage, I took it to work for my friend’s birthday, everyone oohed and ahhed and I sent out the recipe to a couple of people. I really liked the result so I started to play.
I hadn’t cooked with nut meals before so I started trying those out; I made a version of the cake using the same amount of hazelnut meal and milk chocolate. I love hazelnut, not a fan of nuts generally but hazelnuts have snuck in there anyway, to be honest it was probably nuttella and that was what this version of the cake tasted like, nuttella in cake form. Delicious.
Then for my brother I decided to make a white chocolate version because he loves white chocolate, I cook a lot with the kids when I go over there so for one of Jacks birthdays I made a white chocolate and orange version using the same amount of white chocolate, ½ a cup less sugar and the zest and juice of an orange. Again it turned out really well. Because the texture of the cake is so dense it’s an easy one to cook in ovens that you’re not familiar with or are less reliable, densely textured cakes can hide a multitude of sins that something light like a sponge cake would reveal instantly. Dense cakes are like old friends, welcome at parties and they never tell your secrets. Sponge cakes are like the popular kids in high school, the idea of having them is delicious but they would turn on you in heartbeat.
There are only so many cakes you can make though and one wintery evening I had occasion to come up with a hot pudding. I think I may have been watching a documentary on volcanoes or something but I decided that I wanted to come up with something textural and a little soufflé like so I took the original recipe but took out 2 of the egg yolks and was a lot gentler when combining the whites to retain as much of the air as I could. Then I spooned the mix into 4 ramekins and at the centre of each one placed a couple of squares of whatever chocolate I was using and baked for about 30 mins at 180 C. When they cooked the mixture soufled up and the chocolate melts in the centre forming a magma like pool so that when you crack the surface with your teaspoon it crumbles down into this dark pool of chocolate. A soufflé for those that can’t eat wheat.
As usual I’ve also done a cupcake version, the same recipe but with a tablespoon and a half of honey, the inclusion of honey will make cakes retain a little more moisture so this makes for a tender and decadent little cupcake and that is the picture that you’re getting with this post though I will be taking pictures of the chocolate volcano as well because I think you really have to see that.
Enjoy and make them in good health.
Oh I also included a picture of some cupcakes I made for my friend Ally’s 30th just cos I felt like showing off, they were gluten free as well, it’s a tenuous link because it’s mostly about the showing off, and they look pretty damn it.
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