Flourless Chocolate Cake

For dinner with our friends last night, I wanted to make a nice dessert.

The challenge is that one of our friends, Kristin, has a gluten allergy and, well, most desserts contain gluten. Earlier this week, I asked for gluten-free dessert recommendations on a message board I frequent, and someone said that this was the best flourless chocolate cake she had ever had. That was a pretty great review, so I decided to give it a go.




I've only ever had flourless chocolate cake a couple of times in my life, and those times were always at restaurants. So I wasn't really sure what it was going to come out like. The baking process itself was pretty straightforward; just like any other cake, but obviously without flour, baking soda, or baking powder.




After tasting the batter (who can resist?), I knew that this was going to be a really rich, chocolatey cake. I suppose I should have guessed that before--there is a lot of chocolate in this cake.

The person who gave me the recipe told me she had baked this cake in a springform pan with success, so I thought I'd give that a try, too. I always like the look of cakes turned out of their pans--it makes for better presentation. Also, I had a brand new set of springform pans that I had never used before, and was eager to put them to good use.


Flourless Chocolate Cake
(Source: Unknown)

Ingredients:
- 1 lb. (2 sticks) unsalted butter
- 8 oz. bittersweet or semisweet chocolate
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 1 cup unsweetened cocoa
- 6 large eggs
- 1/4 cup cassis or orange juice

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter the bottom and sides of a 9x2 inch cake pan. Line the bottom with parchment paper. Make sure it lies flat.

2. Melt 16 tbsp. (2 sticks) butter and 8 oz chocolate together over simmer water. Stir until very smooth. Set aside to cool.

3. Mix the sugar, cocoa, and eggs just until well combined. Do not overbeat. Add the cool chocolate and butter mixture and again, only mix until combined. You do not want to beat air into the mixture. Stir in the cassis or orange juice.

4. Pour batter into the prepared cake pan, place the pan in a larger pan and pour about 1 inch of hot water around the cake pan (I skipped the larger pan/water thing since I was using a springform pan). Bake until the top of the cake is firm to the touch, about 45 minutes. Cool on a rack to room temp. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate overnight.

Notes: After about 10 minutes of cooling time, I removed the sides of the springform pan. I then inverted the cake onto a serving platter and removed the bottom of the pan as well. Once cool, I wrapped the whole thing in plastic and refrigerated, as the recipe says. However, be sure to remove the cake from the refrigerator at least 3-4 hours before you want to serve. When I first took it out of the fridge, it was really hard. We let it come back to room temperature before eating it. Also, because it is so rich, we served it with french vanilla ice cream. Bon appetit!