A lot of people seem to be deeply suspicious of my cooking.
I like to cook interesting — and yes, sometimes experimental — dishes. When I try to share them with others, my friends and coworkers suddenly surprise me with previously unknown lactose or gluten intolerances. Worst of all is when I try to give food as a gift:
“Here. Please accept this token of our friendship that I baked especially for you. It was hard work, but I wanted you to have it, because I like you so much.”
“No thanks, I’m good.”
If this has happened to you, try this.
Flourless Chocolate Cake
- 2 sticks (200 grams) salted butter
- 8 ounces (230 grams) extremely good dark chocolate. Chocolate chips would work for this, but it will be better with your favorite eating chocolate. Because this is a dense, decadent cake, if you have a hidden stash of Very Dark Chocolate hidden somewhere, that would be a good choice for this.
- 1¼ cups (250 grams) brown sugar
- 1½ cups (125 grams) unsweetened cocoa. If you have Dutch process cocoa, that would be even better; it is less acidic.
- 2 teaspoons (10 grams) vanilla paste – a tablespoon of good vanilla extract will work for this, too.
- ¼ teaspoon (0.5 grams) kosher salt
- 6 whole eggs
Heat your oven to 350º (175º C)
Butter a 9-inch spring-form pan, and cover the bottom with parchment paper. (Easy “cheat” method for cutting a round of parchment paper to size: Fold a square of parchment paper into quarters, then in half, diagonally, to make a triangle. Fold the triangle in half, to make a sharper angle. Keep doing this until you can’t fold the paper anymore. Measure out half the diameter of your pan from the tip — in this case, four and a half inches — then cut across the triangle. Unfold the sharp end, and it will be an almost perfect circle the exact size of your pan. Actually, it will be a pentacontagon — a 50-sided polygon — or something, but close enough to a circle for our purposes.)
Over low heat, brown the butter in a small saucepan until it is the color of a tweed coat and smells nutty. Set it aside.
Break your chocolate up into small pieces, and place it in a plastic or glass mixing bowl. Melt it in your microwave, stirring it every 20 seconds.
Whisk the brown butter into the melted chocolate. Normally, adding a liquid to melted chocolate will make it seize up, but browning the butter has not only added flavor to it but also cooked off its water content.
Whisk in the brown sugar and vanilla, then the eggs, one at a time.
Sift the cocoa powder into the mixture, and whisk to combine. Cocoa powder, like cinnamon and some other dry ingredients, is hydrophobic, which means that it doesn’t like to mix with wet ingredients. Even though there isn’t any water in your mixture anymore, there was a small amount in the eggs. You will have to force the issue with your whisk.
Bake for 40 minutes, remove from the oven, and let it cool for at least half an hour before unmolding it. Your house will smell amazing.
Serve with a truly injudicious amount of whipped cream.
This is a very, very dense and decadent chocolate cake. It is earthy with cocoa flavor, but the brown butter and brown sugar give it a subtle butterscotch background. A small slice at a time will be perfect. For what it’s worth, anyone who normally gets out of trying your cooking by suddenly claiming to have a gluten intolerance will have to find another excuse. For anyone who actually has a gluten sensitivity, this will be a special treat.
Another up-side of this cake is that because it is not very sweet, you might be able to avoid having to share this with young children. Your husband or girlfriend is another matter.
Featured photo: Photo by John Fladd.
