You know that I love working with chocolate 🙂 This flourless chocolate cake (gluten free) is really moist and chocolatey, I love everything about it. It’s made pretty quickly and easily. It’s a perfect dessert for chocolate lovers and it’s also apt for celiacs and people who are allergic to gluten.
This recipe was first uploaded to the blog on may 2017 but a photo update was long due. Also I’ve had this cake many times and I think it doesn’t need the icing sugar and almonds that I topped it with.
You can decide how bitter you want this cake to be by changing the chocolate you use. With 70% cacao in your chocolate you’ll get a quite bitter and intense finish and with a 54% cacao chocolate you get a sweeter version. So you can go with either or even something in between. I used 65% cacao chocolate.
When we make a cake with flour it’s the flour that gives it structure and traps the air generated by the baking powder or bicarbonate of soda. For a flourless cake what’s done many times is to beat the eggs with the sugar generating air. It’s then this air that expands in the oven and makes it spongy.
That’s why it’s really important to be extra careful when you mix the ingredients with the beaten eggs. Even by using folding motions you’re still removing air with each movement so don’t mix beyond what’s absolutely necessary. We also used this technique to make the almond cake.
Flourless chocolate cake
Ingredients
- 400 g dark chocolate 54-70%
- 170 g unsalted butter
- 5 eggs
- 200 g granulated or caster sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- 1 tsp salt
- as needed vegetable oil for greasing the mould
- sliced almonds (optional to garnish)
- icing sugar or cacao powder (optional to garnish)
Instructions
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Melt the chocolate with the butter in the microwave in 30 second intervals until fully melted. Mix in between each interval. You can also melt them on a bain marie.
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Use an electric mixer to beat together the eggs and the sugar until it reaches ribbon stage. You will know you’re there when you draw shape using the egg mixture on top of itself and it takes about 6 seconds to reincorporate. For further reference, watch the video above 🙂
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Add the salt, vanilla essence and chocolate and butter mixture which should now be at room temperature. Fold everything in very carefully as it’s the air from the eggs the thing that will make this cake nice and fluffy instead of a chocolate brick.
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Make a baking paper disc the size of the base of your mould and stick it to it using vegetable oil. Then put some more vegetable oil on top of it and around the inner sides of the mould.
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Our batter goes into the mould and then into the oven at 180C for about 30-40min or until you put a skewer or knife in and it comes out clean.
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Let it cool down to room temperature and then use a thin knife to go all around the cake making sure that it’s unstuck.
