Grown up Chocolate Cake – rich, moist, flourless
May31
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Saturday 30th May (Yes, I’m behind telling you about this) I was going out for dinner with my best friend for her birthday – I won’t say which birthday but needless to say it was an important one – one that I couldn’t less pass without cake. But now we are woman of a certain age it wouldn’t be appropriate to make a cake such as I made for my… younger friends – the epic cake of giantess – this has to be sofisticated, rich… gooie…
Epic Cake - with Coke can for scale
I also had very little time, it was an action packed day with meeting friends for coffee and a mission to pick up a birthday pressent.
It must also be noted that I had a headache, I had had a headache for three days by this point, it was one of THOSE headachs.
This may not have been the most sensible moment to whip up a chocolate cake.
So I did a quick search for flourless chocolate cake and found this - http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Flourless-Chocolate-Cake-14478 - I’ve never made anything from this partucular site, I’ve never been too impressed with it to be honest but this recipe worked rather well.
Considering.
Did I mention the headache yet? And the very packed day?
Oh, and I also decided to dye my hair. And make a cake. In the hour and a half before my friend arrived. Before we were going to go out.
I’m like that sometimes.
Another thing I should mention, my friend is in the food industry, not only can she cook anything that enters her head but she works with food day in day out. This is a woman that knows her onions - figuratively and literately.
So, I was making a cake from a recipe I had never used, involving a technique I had never tried before (flourless-ness), in a very short time frame, whilst dying my hair, with a headache that could melt iceburgs for a food expert specialising in bakery.
What could possible go wrong?
Turns out the only thing that went wrong was lining and buttering the pan – I missed a corner so when I turned it out a corner stuck which I had to peal off and squidge in.
Also I only cooked it for 20 minutes rather than 25 – the inside was gloriously squidgy but maybe a bit too squidgy? Can things ever be too squidgy?
All in all – I would recomend this recipe for those moments when you need a cake that’s very very easy to put together, delightfully squidgy, terribly grown up and that can be flung together with one eye closed in under an hour.
The only change I made to the recpie was to melt the chocolate in the microwave rather than a double boiler, just be gentle with it.
Turns out chocolate cake with pink champagne is a perfect headache cure!
And my friend? She loved it.
Flourless Chocolate Cake for a Grown Up Birthday
- Preheat oven to 375°F and butter an 8-inch round baking pan. Line bottom with a round of wax paper and butter paper. No really. Do
- Chop chocolate into small pieces. In a double boiler or metal bowl set over a saucepan of barely simmering water melt chocolate with butter, stirring, until smooth. Break up chocolate and microwave in bursts of about 30 seconds until it’s melted – stirring in-between times – Don’t Burn It
- Whisk sugar into chocolate mixture.
- Add eggs and whisk well.
- Sift 1/2 cup cocoa powder over chocolate mixture and whisk until just combined.
- Pour batter into pan and bake in middle of oven 25 minutes, or until top has formed a thin crust. Cool cake in pan on a rack 5 minutes and invert onto a serving plate.
- Dust cake with additional cocoa powder to cover up bits that stuck to pan.
- Goes perfectly with fresh strawberries and pink champagne ;-)