Daring Bakers February Challenge: Flourless Chocolate Cake

[And now for the requisite Daring Bakers Blurb: The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef. We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge ]

There seems to be a recurring theme with me: I hate recipes that other people love. I guess I'm peculiar. Not really a surprise.

I've always known this. I've been weird since I took my first breath. Tell me, do you know children who hate pizza? Me! Or won't chew gum? Again, that was me. Or refused soda in favor of milk? Yep, I'm that girl.

What others swoon over I find dull or unappealing. I've despised Flourless Chocolate Cake ever since "Chocolate Decadence" blazed its way across every menu in America in the early '90s. I don't like the texture. I don't particularly like the flavor (why would I ruin a good chocolate bar by adding eggs and butter to it?). And the calories? Do I really need pack even more fat per square inch into my chocolate than is there in a bar already? It is too dense, too sticky, too intense, and too mouth-coating.

So yeah, I'm a grump when it comes to flourless chocolate cake.

This month's challenge was a bit of a letdown for me. In my time as a pastry chef and passionate sweets eater, I've found only one recipe that induced anything even resembling a swoon: L'Esperance's Flourless Chocolate Cake recipe, which I was given for use on our Mother's Day menu when I was (briefly) the pastry chef at David Kinch's first restaurant, Sent Sovi. It is a slightly more complicated recipe, less chocolately, but definitely delicious. And the texture isn't like weirdly eggy fudge. Here's that recipe:

L’Esperance’s Flourless Chocolate Cake

Prep Time: 60 minutes

 

Ingredients :

 

6 ½ ounces 70% or higher chocolate

6 ½ ounces butter

6 ½ ounces sugar

6 ½ ounces egg whites

6 yolks + 1 egg

Pinch of Salt

 

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Grease, line, and sugar 2 ea 9” cake pans
3. Melt chocolate and butter together over double boiler. Cool.
4. Combine 1/3 of the sugar with the egg whites in a mixing bowl. Warm over a double boiler, until sugar is dissolved. Whip until stiff.
5. Combine rest of sugar with egg yolks and beat until ribbon stage. Add 1/3 of egg YOLK mixture to chocolate, incorporate completely.
6. Fold this mixture back into the YOLK mixture.
7.  Fold 1/3 of whipped whites into the yolk/chocolate mixture. When yolk mixture is light, add this back to whipped whites, folding gently.
8. Pour into prepared pans.
9. Bake approximately 30 minutes. A toothpick should come out fairly dry __________________________________________________________

It is a great recipe, but it was not the recipe for the challenge. The recipe for the challenge was a very expensive flourless chocolate cake with completely different ratios - including a POUND of chocolate. Not one to skimp, I purchased and combined a little heavy-duty Valrhona with some ScharffenBerger, nearly a $18 investment (and very painful, considering I'm unemployed and unconnected to the world of cheap retail).

It is an easy recipe. Melt, mix, mix, bake, cool, eat. If you love this sort of thing, it is a good recipe. If you don't, you, like me, will end up giving it away to your friends on Movie Night (thank you Doug and Nell). I'll admit, here and only here, that when served warm, this cake is pretty tasty - and soft. A few seconds in the microwave does the trick.

The one saving grace is that the this month's challenge required that we also make an ice cream recipe of our choosing. So I used this one, which I developed earlier in the month. It is a deep, rich, decadent and sweet chocolate custard that can be made without an ice cream maker. Mom, the diabetic rebel (she still won't live her life as a diabetic, shaving years off her life, I'm sure), give it two thumbs up.



Here's the Daring Bakers Recipe for February:

Chocolate Valentino

Preparation Time:  20 minutes
16 ounces (1 pound) (454 grams) of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
½ cup (1 stick) plus 2 tablespoons (146 grams total) of unsalted butter
5 large eggs separated

1. Put chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and set over a pan of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water) and melt, stirring often.
2. While your chocolate butter mixture is cooling. Butter your pan and line with a parchment circle then butter the parchment.
3. Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites and put into two medium/large bowls.
4. Whip the egg whites in a medium/large grease free bowl until stiff peaks are formed (do not over-whip or the cake will be dry).
5. With the same beater beat the egg yolks together.
6. Add the egg yolks to the cooled chocolate.
7. Fold in 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture and follow with remaining 2/3rds. Fold until no white remains without deflating the batter. {link of folding demonstration}
8. Pour batter into prepared pan, the batter should fill the pan 3/4 of the way full, and bake at 375F/190C
9. Bake for 25 minutes until an instant read thermometer reads 140F/60C.
Note – If you do not have an instant read thermometer, the top of the cake will look similar to a brownie and a cake tester will appear wet.
10. Cool cake on a rack for 10 minutes then unmold.