Flourless chocolate cake
A great alternative choccie cake recipe for when you want something a little different (or you've run out of flour...). Makes one 22cm round cake, which serves 8-10 people, depending on how much you like them.
Ingredients
- 100g skinned hazelnuts
- 200g Whittaker’s Dark Ghana chocolate, broken into pieces
- 200g salted butter, diced
- 4 Freedom Farms eggs, separated
- 200g caster sugar
- 100g ground almonds
- Icing sugar to decorate
Method
- Preheat the oven to 180℃. Grease the base and sides and line the base of a 22cm springform cake tin with baking paper. Spread hazelnuts on a baking tray and toast in hot oven for around 15 minutes, checking halfway though, until golden. Remove from the oven and let cool. Put toasted hazelnuts in a food processor or blender and pulse until you reach the consistency of demerara sugar. Set aside.
- Put chocolate and butter into a double boiler or a bowl set over a small amount of simmering water in a saucepan (ensure the water is not touching the bowl). Melt, stirring, until almost entirely melted then remove from heat and stir until melted and glossy. Allow to cool slightly.
- Whisk egg yolks and sugar until fluffy. In a separate bowl whisk egg whites until soft peaks form.
- Stir melted chocolate and butter into the egg yolk mixture and combine thoroughly. Stir in the hazelnuts and the ground almonds, then fold in the egg whites using a whisk or metal spoon, until combined.
- Pour batter into prepared tin. Bake for 35-40 minutes. The trusty old skewer test doesn’t apply here as you still want the centre nice and fudgy, but the cake is ready when a crust has formed on top of the cake (the crust may crack – that’s fine!)
- Cool for 10 minutes in tin before carefully turning out onto a cake rack to cool completely.
- You may like to decorate the cake by sprinkling icing sugar through a sieve over a paper doily or your own homemade paper-cut pattern – or pile on fruit, berries, cream and so on if you prefer.