... And Then the Flood

Continuing in the spirit of Great British Bake Off-inspired experimentation, I moved from a cake without any chemical leavening agents to a cake without any chemical leavening agents and without any flour.  No flour!  That's right all you gluten-free people out there.  It is not that there is a flour-substitute in this cake - there isn't.  It is made only with chocolate, sugar, water, butter, eggs and coffee.  Some flourless chocolate cakes use similar ingredients but are treated almost as souffles, with soft peak egg whites folded into the batter to raise the cake.  This results in a 'fallen' look to the top of the cake when it cools.  This cake, however, is not really leavened at all.  Something akin to a mousse is made through combining melted chocolate, butter and sugar with beaten whole eggs and coffee.  It is not folded into anything, however, and no heavy cream or gelatin is involved.  The batter is simply poured into the prepared pan and baked in a bain-marie.

I say 'simply', and it generally is, but please take more care than I did - there will be less stress in the end.  In order to easily remove the cake after baking, I used a springform pan.  I used two springform pans actually: a 9" for the cake and an 11" for the bain-marie.  I took care to line the inside of the larger pan with foil so that the water would not leak out of it.  I did not, however, line the outside of the smaller pan to keep the water from leaking in...

Fold pieces of foil several times in the centre to waterproof.

I chose this recipe from Nick Malgieri, or rather was given it by my sister, because it was the nearest version either of us knew to the flourless chocolate cake that we used to decorate in the bakery.  I adapted it to fill a 9" pan instead of an 8", and this version can be found in the Recipe Box, along with the salted caramel and whisky sauce (see below).

If the chocolate does not melt, reheat gently over a double boiler.

While I'd seen the cakes baked many times, and eaten them many times, I'd never actually made any myself; hence the experimentation.  I did remember that the bakery used esspresso in the cakes, so I got a double shot and mixed that with enough pour-over coffee to make a 1/4 cup.  I did not, however, remember the more important piece of information...

Let the coffee cool before whipping it into the eggs.

As I was lowering the cake into the bain-marie, and giving it a bit of a push into the water (I didn't think it should float - another genius move) I had visions of peeling foil off of the bottoms of the flourless chocolate cakes in the bakery.  'That's odd...', I started to think in the split second before the water began to gurgle up with increasing speed between the edge of the batter and the inside of the pan, before another leak sprung and then another.  The top of the cake had flooded before I could finish cursing.

Temper the eggs with a little bit of chocolate before combining.

I poured the water out and off of the cake as best as I could, and proceeded to put it in the oven with fingers crossed.  The oven was having heating issues as well, of course, requiring to be set at Gas Mark 5 despite the desired temperature being a mere 300F (150C); fortunately I had purchased a thermometer that morning.¹

Whip it all together...

When the timer went off, I held my breath, opened the oven and pulled out a cake submerged under a small lake.  More cursing.  I very nearly had my own personal bingate!  Instead, when trying to tip the cake over the sink (not into the rubbish) I noticed that it was holding together, so I changed tack and soaked up the water with paper towels, covered the top where it was dark and would have been at risk of burning, and put it back in the oven.  However long it was in there in the end, I couldn't say, but I removed it for good when I thought that it seemed set and the top a bit dry.

Not too bad, in spite of the flood.

While the cake was cooling, I set to making salted caramel and whisky sauce to cover up any less aesthetically-pleasing aspects of the cake.  Salted caramel whisky sauce also has the added benefit, of course, of being utterly and totally delicious.  But you can leave it off if you like, your call.

I made this caramel once before, but in its original calvados incarnation in a recipe from BBC Food.  This time I substituted whisky and added about a 1/4 tsp of coarse Breton sea salt (for a very Celtic sauce, I suppose).  I thought that the sauce might have needed a bit of reheating before serving, but it was fine at room temperature.  If left in the refrigerator overnight, however, prepare for it to be spreadable.

Not bad for gluten-free.

¹ It really make me wonder what I baked the last three cakes at, though...