Flourless Chocolate Cake – Take 3

This weekend while visiting my mom, I rummaged through her cupboards to find the makings for Gina’s Flourless Chocolate Cake. I brought our spring form pan from home because that was the one item I didn’t think she would have (I was correct, she doesn’t).

While my mom was away at a book club meeting, I started baking which meant that we really had to hunt to find several of the ingredients. Hardest to find where the chocolate chips and then when we did, I realized that my mom doesn’t have a scale to weigh the necessary eight ounces. A quick conference with all the people on hand sent me to the internet where I quickly found that eight ounces of chocolate chips equals 1 1/2 to 2-cups. We all agreed that in this case more is better, so I used two-cups of chocolate chips.

I put the two sticks of butter in a pan (using up all of her butter) with the chocolate chips and then added the powdered cocoa into the pan. This out of order as the cocoa powder is supposed to be added to the egg mixture, but there was a lot of activity in the house and I missed the correct order.

I put our son to work stirring the chocolate/butter mixture while I started on the rest of the recipe. Our son noted that the chocolate mixture in the pan was almost black. A quick review of the cocoa powder can revealed it is Hershey’s Special Dark cocoa powder. Ok, that’s two changes to the recipe.

I added the eggs, sugar, salt and the brandy into the mixture and started mixing. Now my mom doesn’t buy the cheap Monarch brandy like I use, she has a nice Cresta Blanca 22 year old California Brandy.

When the chocolate melted, I slowly stirred it into the egg mixture using the Kitchen Aid stand mixer. This took several minutes to get all the chocolate into the pan, but made a very smooth consistency in the batter.

I baked the cake for the fifty minutes and out of the oven came a very dark, rich looking cake that smelled wonderful. I cooled it for about two hours before transferring it to a plate for serving. I had to shake the powdered sugar onto the cake directly from the bag, but I was able to get a fairly even coating.

I served the cake after dinner with some canned whipped cream on top. I found out today that my mom has some homemade blackberry syrup that we will use tonight when we have the other half of the cake.

The dark chocolate and the better brandy added to the richness of this dessert. Some of the pieces had cracked during cooking, but that was quickly overlooked once everyone tasted the full flavor from the dark chocolate.

My wife has asked that in the future, I only make this dessert with these modifications: dark chocolate cocoa powder, good brandy, and adding the cocoa powder during the heating process. Not a problem, just a trip to the liquor store to get a nice brandy for next time.

Adventure In Food: Author: Kerry Howell