How do you get it creamy yet fluffy, have you made the original River Café
chocolate nemesis recipe, and which other gluten-free desserts are worth a
go?
This week has been a learning curve for me. I’d naively assumed that a
flourless chocolate cake was the kind of thing you might make when a coeliac
friend was coming for tea, possibly involving some sort of ground nuts or
cornflour.
But after looking at a few recipes, it dawned on me that I was barking up
completely the wrong tree. Though such cakes certainly exist, the classic
flourless variety doesn’t just eschew wheat, but any sort of starchy meal,
giving it a rich flavour and a dense, fudgy or creamy texture that puts it
firmly in the dessert, rather than the teatime, category. (Though, of course,
there’s nothing to stop you inviting that coeliac friend for dinner.)
Flourless chocolate cakes don’t tend to vary much in the ingredient
department: there is chocolate, obviously, plus eggs, sugar and some sort of
fat, usually butter but occasionally cream. The difference, as I discovered,
comes in how they are combined and baked.
The chocolate
Justin
Gellatly’s flourless chocolate cake.
Most recipes use just melted chocolate, but ex-St John pastry chef Justin
Gellatly’s excellently named Bread, Cake, Doughnut, Pudding sifts in some cocoa
powder as well. Having used a combination of the two with great success in my
brownie and my teatime chocolate cake recipes, I know that cocoa comes in useful
when you want a concentrated chocolate flavour without making the cake itself
too sickly, and so it proves here. Though undeniably rich, Gellatly’s cake
manages to be intensely flavoured but less cloying than the infamous River Café
chocolate nemesis (the easy version, obviously; I’m not in the market for the
“kind of cowpat” reported by those unfortunates who trialled the original
recipe).
Gellatly and the River Café both use a relatively small amount of chocolate
and cocoa in proportion to the other ingredients, which proves wise: I find both
David Lebovitz’s Racines cake, from his book Ready for Dessert, and San
Francisco’s Zuni Café’s signature gateau victoire a little too bitter for my
taste, though those with more sophisticated palates may disagree. I do like
Lebovitz’s cocoa nibs, though – these crunchy shards of roasted cocoa bean add
texture and a hit of bitterness to each mouthful. If you can’t find them,
however, they’re not essential.
The sugar
David
Lebovitz’s flourless chocolate cake.
Everyone except Lebovitz uses caster sugar – he goes for granulated, but it
doesn’t seem to make much difference as far as I can tell. The River Café adds
most of the sugar in the form of a syrup, for reasons I don’t entirely
understand, but which someone better at kitchen chemistry than me might be able
to explain – syrups are often used to keep cakes soft and moist, but without
flour, this seems less likely. None of the recipes I try have quite the right
amount of sugar for my liking. Annie Bell’s French
and flourless, from her Baking Bible, is closest, while Lebovitz and Zuni
are too bitter, and the River Café and Gellatly a smidgen too sweet. As well as
striking a balance with quantity, I’m going to sub in a proportion of soft brown
sugar too, for a hint of caramel flavour. I’m surprised that Lebovitz and
Gellatly are the only bakers to make mention of a balancing pinch of salt, which
is helpful for rounding out the flavour of most sweet dishes, but absolutely
essential in a rich dish like this.
The eggs and fats
River
Cafe’s flourless chocolate cake.
Eggs are usually separated and whisked up independently to give the cake a
moussey consistency, which saves it from overwhelming heaviness. The River Café
and Zuni use whole eggs instead, the latter with two extra yolks as well, which
explains why their cakes have the smoothest, densest texture. Gellatly’s cake
contains a far higher proportion of eggs than any other recipe – 11 as opposed
to only four in the Zuni version – which I suspect is why it is incredibly rich
yet surprisingly light. Butter is the fat of choice here; only Zuni chooses
whipped cream instead, diluting the chocolate flavour.
Extras
Annie
Bell’s flourless chocolate cake.
Lebovitz flavours his cake with vanilla essence and espresso, while Zuni uses
just the coffee. Though I can’t pick up much in the way of vanilla, I’m
surprised by how much difference even a little coffee makes – though I’d be
hard-pressed to identify it as a flavour, the bitterness works brilliantly with
that of the chocolate, giving the whole thing greater depth.
Cooking
Zuni’s
flourless chocolate cake.
The River Café and Zuni both bake their versions in a water bath to moderate
the temperature for a creamier result, but as this is still a cake rather than a
mousse, I prefer it to have a little bit of fluffiness to it. Gellatly manages
to achieve both textures in the same dish by baking two-thirds of his mixture
for 30 minutes, cooling it for 20, adding the remainder and putting it back in
the oven for another 20 minutes, so the bottom is drier and lighter and the top
creamy and dense. It’s a really nice idea, but a bit of a faff. Instead, I’m
plumping for something in between the two – a rich, dense chocolate cake with
just enough fluff to make it worthy of the name. (Serves 8-10) 260g dark chocolate, broken into pieces 260g butter 1 tbsp strong coffee 8 eggs, separated 100g soft light brown sugar 160g golden caster sugar 85g cocoa powder ½ tsp salt 2 tbsp cocoa nibs (optional)
Grease a 23cm cake tin and line with greaseproof paper. Melt the chocolate
and butter together in a heatproof bowl set over, but not touching, a pan of
simmering water. Stir until smooth, then stir in the coffee and set aside to
cool slightly. Heat the oven to 160C/320F/gas mark three.
Put the egg yolks and sugars in a food processor and whisk until doubled in
volume. Turn the machine off and sift the cocoa powder on top of the egg mixture
(don’t just dump it in or you’ll get lumps). Add the salt, then mix on a low
speed until the cocoa is well combined.
Put the egg whites in another large bowl and whisk to the soft-peak
stage.
Gently fold the melted chocolate mixture into the egg yolk mixture. Fold a
third of the egg white into the mixture to loosen it before very carefully
folding the rest in, until the mixture is no longer streaky but an even, rich
brown. Sprinkle the cocoa nibs on top, if using.
Spoon into the tin and bake for 40-50 minutes until just set on top, then
allow to cool in the tin on a wire rack. Serve with something tart, such as
creme fraiche.
