Friday, May 27, 2011

Mmm... Flourless Chocolate Cake

It's been a while since I last blogged. I shall hopefully be blogging a little more over the summer, as I'll have less uni work to occupy my mind. Hopefully I will have a job, but so far there's no promising news on that...
Anywho, today I wanted to post a lovely recipe for a flourless chocolate cake that I made yesterday for the birthday of my wheat allergic housemate :). It's very tasty.

Mmm, Tasty Flourless Chocolate Cake

I really should have a better picture, but wasn't thinking about blogging it til just now...

For cake:
400g plain chocolate, broken up
6 tablespoons water
12 large eggs, separated, at room temperature
1 1/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt

For filling/topping:
2 cups heavy cream
6 tablespoons confectioners sugar, sifted
4 tablespoons Grand Marnier*
*I substituted 4 tablespoons cocoa and 1 teaspoon orange extract (the recipe I found suggested vanilla extract, but I'd run out) - it was really tasty - might use slightly less cocoa powder next time, but it was still good.

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 170°C. Line cake tin (I think mine was something like a 20cm round springform tin).
Melt chocolate with water in a small heavy saucepan over very low heat, stirring. Cool to lukewarm.
Beat yolks, 2/3 cup sugar, and salt until thick and pale for about 5 minutes. Stir in melted chocolate until combined. In a separate HUGE bowl, beat 12 egg whites until they hold stiff peaks.
Add remaining sugar and beat until whites just hold stiff peaks. Fold one third of whites into melted-chocolate mixture, then fold in remaining whites carefully.
Pour batter into cake tin. Bake until a knife or skewer inserted comes out clean (Took about 45 minutes - I was checking ever 15 mins) - May need to cover top with baking paper part way through so top is not burned (I did this after the first 15 minutes). Leave to cool for a while, remove from tin and once cool enough, put into fridge. Note - Cake will still be kind of wobbly/squishy when removed from tin due to it's flourless nature, but will firm up in the fridge.

To make the filling:
In a clean large bowl, beat cream with icing sugar and Grand Marnier (or substitute) until it just holds stiff peaks.

To assemble the cake:
Remove cake from fridge and slice in half horizontally. Carefully move top layer to another plate. Spread about half mixture on bottom layer, replace top layer and spread remainder of cream on top. Decorate as you wish :).
Keep cake in the refrigerator until serving time.


Notes:
I've put it here the way I did it, for the original recipe I found, click here. Most of the alterations I made were just because I didn't have the stuff needed, so the other recipe is probably better... but this way still works well :).

You really do need one or two big bowls for this, I had to juggle the mixture between two bowls when I was folding the two parts together as there was so much of it! But I've only got 1 medium sized mixing bowl, so this probably isn't as much of a problem for other people...

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