So, I wanted to start out my 30 days of baking with something unique but also something that sounded super tasty to me. I have many recipes and cookbooks that I went through, along with my favorite food blogs, and came up with an interesting cake. If you know me, you know I love chocolate cakes. I am always in the search for a fabulous chocolate cake that is both dense but airy, and has a fabulous chocolate taste. I do not need it to be a chocolate overload of flavor, but just a good over all taste. I love the flourless chocolate cake from school, the OCI Dream Torte, but it is a little denser than what I am looking for, but the taste is fabulous.
This cake caught my eye because it does not have any frosting, but instead a crunchy meringue in its place. The idea of breaking through an airy baked meringue with my fork just sounded like music to my ears as I imagined the finished product. From a young age, I was very much opposed to any dessert with meringue in it. My brother always loved lemon meringue pie, so we often had it at the holidays along with an apple pie (my pie of choice), but I just could not see the appeal of the fluffly white topping. Only in the last couple years have I realized how tasty meringue can be, and now very much enjoy a good lemon meringue pie (shhh...don't tell my brother). This meringue though, is not the soft fluffy kind, but the crispy baked kind, which is just as tasty too. As a kid, I remember seeing baked meringues for sale in small bakeries, but I could not fathom how they could be tasty seeing as the fluffy stuff wasn't on my untasty list. Now, I realize what I missed out on and that makes me sad. But I will fix all that I missed out on with this cake!
And so the cake. This is a flourless chocolate cake topped with a meringue with almonds and chocolate pieces. Mmmm... sounds so tasty! The original recipe called for hazelnuts in the meringue topping, but I could not find them on my shopping trip, so I opted to sub them out for almonds, which personally I like better. So I started out my morning by doing my mise en place for my recipe.
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| espresso, vanilla, salt, brown sug, bittersweet choc, eggs, and butter. |
I measured out all my ingredients, melted my chocolate, separated all my eggs, and cleaned off my Kitchen Aid. Personally, I love my Kitchen Aid and am sad that it is starting to make some funny noises that worry me that it might be breaking down. Now, this is a Kitchen Aid my parents bought who knows when (sometime when I am a child), that still works well up til now. With many cleaning out sessions of the kitchen by different family members, the mixer has been lucky to still have all its parts (the paddle attachment was recently found much to my joy)! Blah, I am getting sidetracked, which is easy for me.
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| the missing paddle attachment! |
Back to the cake. So I mixed up the cake, though I forgot to continually take pictures, and it all came together well. I popped it in the oven for the 25 minutes the recipe called for the baking time, but wound up baking it for about 7 minutes longer as the center was still super soft and jiggly when I tested it. While it baked I made my meringue for the topping and mixed in the chopped chocolate and almonds.
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| almonds, bittersweet choc, cornstarch, sugar, and egg whites. |
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| the meringue mountain! |
Once the cake was no longer jiggly, I pulled it out and spread on the meringue (I remembered to take a picture!) then put it back in the oven for another 25-30 minutes until the meringue was brown and crispy.
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| hot out of the oven! |
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| cracked and fallen... |
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| ...but still tasty! |
Seeing the result, I have decided to redo the cake at a later date. I was unhappy with how the meringue seemed to fall and I think in the end, that the amount of meringue made in the recipe, that it was too much for the pan (which was the size called for in the recipe). It would be the right amount for a slightly bigger pan, but for this one I will cut it down a bit so that it wont rise so high over the edges and hold on when it fell. I was expecting it to fall some, but because it caught the edges, it broke it up more than expected.
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| mmMmmmm.... |
For this baked good, my dad was my taste tester. He was very surprised to find out it was a flourless cake, but found it very airy. I agreed with him that it was more airy that I had expected, because I thought it was going to be more dense like the Dream Torte I love. I loved how the meringue was crunchy as I took my first bite, but also melted in my mouth to mix with the soft chocolate cake to make a fabulous bite. Though the cake was great, I personally I think that the cake could use a little more chocolate for my taste. I also think the amount of nuts in the meringue could be cut in half as well, though I do love the crunch and taste of the roasted almonds. I was very happy with the fact that the meringue, crispy and fallen as it was, did not fall apart as my dad had predicted when I cut it. It stayed together quite well as I served it and that is a big plus to be, because I hate when a cake falls apart when being served!
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Tasty!
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Overall, on a taste scale of 1-10, I would give this cake an 8. It was unique and tasty and I would definitely make it again!
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