The final cake of my baking spree was this chocolate ‘bomb’. It is quite easy to make but got rave reviews. ‘Flourless’ means that the only ingredients are chocolate, butter, sugar and eggs. So indulge in small quantities 🙂

Ingredients

For a 24 cm (9″) pan (the cake is really a ‘bomb’ so this will feed at least 10 people for dessert):

350 grams (12 oz) dark chocolate (between 70% and 80% cacao solids)

175 grams (1 1/2 sticks or 6 oz) butter

130 grams (12 tbsp) sugar, preferably vanilla-scented (created by keeping vanilla beans in the sugar jar)

6 eggs, separated

For decoration/glaze (optional):

175 grams (6 oz) dark chocolate

80 ml (1/3 cup) whipping cream

80 ml (1/3 cup) corn syrup

Preparation

Butter the springform pan. Line the bottom and sides of the springform pan with parchment paper. It helps to draw the outline on the parchment paper first (and will make you feel like you’re back in kindergarten…)

Butter the parchment paper as well (so there will be butter between the pan and the paper as well as between the paper and the cake).

Break the chocolate into pieces, cut the butter into similar pieces and melt in a saucepan over low heat while stirring. (You can also do this au bain marie, but on induction on a low setting it works just as well without.)

Keep heating very gently and stirring until the mixture is completely smooth. Let it cool to lukewarm, stirring now and then.

Pre-heat the oven at 175C/350F.

Whisk the egg whites in a very clean dry bowl with a very clean dry whisk or very clean dry beaters until soft peaks form. Add half the sugar (6 tbsp or 65 grams) and whisk until firmer peaks form.

Whisk the egg yolks with the remaining sugar (6 tbsp or 65 grams) for about 3 minutes until creamy and pale yellow.

Mix in the chocolate mixture that should not be hot anymore (otherwise the egg yolks will be cooked!).

Poor into the prepared pan.

Gently fold in the egg whites in three additions. By doing this gently, you keep as much air in the batter as possible.

When the mixture is smooth, bake for 50 minutes at 175C/350F. The top will be cracked and a tooth pick inserted into the cake will come out with some moist crumbs attached.

Let the cake cool to room temperature on a rack. The cake will fall, that is normal and not a problem.

Remove the pan sides and invert the cake onto a plate or other flat serving surface. (Easiest to put the plate on the cake and then turn everything upside down.)

You can stop here and just decorate the cake with sweetened wipped cream and/or cherries, etc. Or go on to make a glaze.

I was lazy and just melted some more chocolate very gently (for optimal results it should be exactly 32C/90F) and poured this on the cake.

To prevent the mess in the photo above, you can put the cake on a rack so any excess glaze will fall on the work surface below. Or move the cake to a clean plate afterwards like I did (unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the ‘clean’ cake).

For a proper glaze, heat whipping cream gently and add chocolate in pieces and syrup. When everything is mixed, pour half the glaze on the cake and smooth. Freeze for a few minutes until set, and pour the remaining glaze and smooth. Chill for about an hour until the glaze is firm.