The first gold medal: flourless chocolate cake

Again, my faithful following, please forgive the absence. It sometimes seems that Annalena's life is a bad, and good, episode of "As the Stomach Turns." For the good, there have been a welter of parties and celebrations, especially those surrounding the birthday of one of my dearest friends, to whom this entry will be dedicated (you know who you are, but since you prefer NOT to be mentioned, I shall respect that). There has been psychodrama, both high and low, including finding out that I had been evicted from an organization who's life I saved. I could tell NYCGMC what to do, but I would hurt too many friends. Instead I shall return to the kitchen.

Many months ago, another good friend, asked me if I could point her to the blog entry where I wrote about "the" flourless chocolate cake recipe. See, this is the one that has one me two gold medals. I could have sworn that I had posted that recipe, and in looking for it, never found it. Of course, I shared it with her, but I do not believe I ever got around to posting the recipe. I made it last weekend, and it's time to share it.

This is the oldest recipe in my current repertoire. I remember where I found it, and when I first made it. I was a law student, looking for something to do with my time other than study (and I found MANY such alternatiaves). One of the things that I had started doing in college, was reading the NY Times, when you could NOT finish the Sunday NY Times. Those were the days: book reviews where half the text was in French, music reviews that quoted scores, editorials that challenged. AH, yes, heady intellectual times. And one thing I always read was the cooking section. One Sunday, in '80, the paper published a recipe for a flourless chocolate cake.

Now, for those of you who think of flourless chocolate cake as a cliche', get a sense of history. There was a time when this was new. I'm serious about that, just like there was a time when cash cards were a reason to switch banks, because not all of them offered them.

No, children, I am NOT talking about pre-historic time. I am talking about the 80s. YES THE 80S . A time when many of you were not yet born, but not prehistoric, by any means. The first flourless cakes were presented in very high end restaurants, and eventually, the recipes filtered down.

One of my "talents," if you can call it that, is getting a feel for food trends, before they happen. I remember that when I saw the recipe, I knew. I "just knew" it was a keeper. And after I made it the first time, I knew the published recipe was a disaster. Total and complete. It called for baking the cake for an hour and 45 minutes. I kid you not. I now bake it for 30 minutes, and it is fine. Baking it for that full length of time turned it into a block of charcoal. I also used Baker's unsweetened chocolate, because this was before the chocolate revolution, and this is what we had. I used regular supermarket eggs, and hotel bar butter, because this is what we had. Now, of course, you have to choose "what chocolate" to use (I use Scharffenberger bittersweet, or Callebault), not "organic or non organic" eggs, but "WHAT BRAND" of organic eggs (I use eggs from various farmers market vendors), and what organic butter. (I use horizon, which is controversial, but everyone should deal with it).

The neat thing about this recipe is it forces you to answer the question : do I like cake or frosting better, because the batter is used for both. And the smaller your cake, the more frosting you have, and vice versa.

For a while, it seemed that I was making this cake every single week. This, and a cheesecake. But I was also 23 at the time - younger even than the people I cooked it for. My birthday boy asked for a flourless chocolate cake, and I didn't even realize I had never made him one. Well, now I have. And it was a hit. Even with people who don't like chocolate.

It does seem that this cake is embedded in my genetic code. I pulled out the recipe from the diary I kept during that time period (and talk about BITTERSWEET!), and I realized that I could do it by heart. It really is very easy. You'll be able to do it by heart too. And you should do it WITH your heart, because baking without love, is no better than buying a box of cookies.



You need some very good quality chocolate, bittersweet if you can. If you like a sweeter cake, you can go to semisweet, but that's as far as you can go. Unsweetened WILL work , but buy a good quality one. The cheaper ones give a bitterness to the cake that you dont want. You will need somewhere between 8-12 ounces of chocolate. 8 gives you a mild cake, 12 a very heavy one, almost like a brick of fudge. My beloved scharffenberger comes in 9.7 ounce packages, and that's what I use. Chop it into fine pieces, and then put it into a pot, with two sticks of unsalted butter, cut into cubes. Melt this, over low heat, stirring as you go. Use very low heat, because you don't want this expensive chocolate to burn. When it's just about melted, take it off the heat, and put it to the side, because you'll want it to cool.



I had you do the chocolate first, because it needs to be no more than luke warm, and the more time you give it to cool, the better. You are now going to separate five eggs. And after you separate the five eggs, you are going to add the yolks of 3 more to the five you have. Use the extra three for something else. Maybe a fat free omelet the next morning. Add a cup and a quarter of sugar to the egg yolks.



WAIT. Remember I was talking about levels of sweetness above? Taste your chocolate. Remember that sugar is only going to make it sweeter, so make a judgement call. I have brought the sugar down to 3/4 of a cup, and gotten a very strong "chocolate lovers only" cake, and I've brought it up to 1.5, and made candy. One cup or 1.25 cups is, to me, the best.



Get the mixer going on those yolks and sugar and get it going for a while. You want a very thick, almost white mass. Pour in the melted chocolate/butter mixture, and stir it to a uniform color. Put it aside.



Now, take those five egg whites, and add a teaspoon of white vinegar. Set up the mixer with a whisk attachment, and beat the hell out of them. Make sure you're getting very firm peaks. When you do, start folding the whites into the chocolate mixture, in thirds. Stir it gently but thoroughly. This is not that easy to do, but you want to incorporate all of the white, so that there isn't any streaking and you want it throughout the chocolate mixture. Stir from the bottom. You'll need to because the chocolate tends to settle .



When you're done, get an 8, 9, or 10 inch cake pan, preferably one with sides that release, like a spring form pan. Grease it. Know that - DUH- an 8 inch pan will give you a higher, softer cake, and a 10 inch pan a lower, crisper one.



Now the crucial moment: cake or frosting, frosting or cake? You really need to put at least 1/2 of the batter into the pan, and you can go up to 3/4 of it. Actually, you can go all the way and forego the frosting, but why would you? Once you've made your call, put the cake on a baking sheet, put it in a pre-heated, 350 oven and go away for thirty minutes.



During that time, the cake will rise a bit, like a souffle cake, and it will fall and crack. Nuthin you can do about that, and you don't want to do anything either. If you're using the smaller pan, and you want a drier cake, let it bake another ten minutes or so.



When you're done, let it cool completely. And I MEAN completely here. You don't want that frosting to melt.



Let's turn to that frosting. Just as it is, this is plenty good. BUT.... now you get to play. Are you a coffee fan? WEll, now's your chance to add espresso powder, or a few spoons of your favorite drink, or some kahlua. Are you, like me, a citrus queen? Gran Marnier, if you please. Do you have an undying love of raspberries? You know what to do. Frankly, I am intrigued by the idea of adding chartreuse to it, but I doubt if my friends would eat it. My birthday boy suggested ginger, and yes indeed, candied ginger is just dandy here. So do what you would like and just spoon it over the cake, when released from the pan. Pile it up, it won't move too much.



You can keep this at room temperature, which makes it a soft cake, or you can refrigerate it. Refrigerated, it's more like a block of fudge, again, and at room temperature, it's nice and soft.



Cut small pieces. If you haven't figured it out, this is a very rich cake. It can easily serve 12. (Now, I can hear my faithful Sue saying "YEAH RIGHT."). But it can.



Like I said, this one is embedded in my genome. Embed it in yours. Maybe you'll get a medal too. In any event, what you'll get is applause, and requests to make it again. Annalena promises those.