Best flourless, gluten free chocolate cake and the recipe is UP!

I have a fabulous cake recipe that I really should share, it's more of a mud-type cake than a regular cake, flourless, chocolately, squidegy and delicious.

It happens to be gluten free too, by virtue of being flourless, and is fabulous for any fancy or not-so-fancy occasion.

I have however, misplaced the recipe.

I know, clever aren't I?

I pulled it out of my file folder to write up a couple of days ago and didn't get to it, sooooooo............it's mia right this moment.

BUT, I have some photos to leave you drooling while I look for it.

Ok, found it! Here it is:

250 grams dark chocolate

125 grams butter

6 eggs: 2 whole, 4 separated

175 grams caster sugar

First up, line the bottom of a 23cm springform with baking paper.

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler (or the microwave), then let the butter melt in the warm chocolate.

Beat the 2 whole eggs and the 4 yolks with 75 grams of the caster sugar, then carefully add the chocolate.

In another bowl, whisk the 4 egg whites until foamy, then gradually add the 100 grams of caster sugar and whisk until the whites are holding their shape but not too stiff.

Lighten the chocolate mixture with a dollop of egg whites,

then fold in the rest of the whites.

Pour into the tin and bake for 35-40 minutes or until the cake is risen and cracked and the centre is no longer wobbly.

Cool the cake in the tin, the middle will sink as it cools.

When you're ready to eat it, fill the centre with soft whipped cream and grate some chocolate over the top.

Hmm, I really need a better final picture here, but think dense, fudgey chocolate, cool, soft whipped cream...(can you tell I nearly turned this cream into butter? Whoops.)

I think this is a Nigella recipe, but as usual I'm working from a page that I photocopied long ago, so which book exactly I can't tell you.

Oh, and the original also has cointreau and orange zest in it (you add them to the chocolate mixture along with the eggs: 2 tablespoons of cointreau and the grated zest of one orange, in case you're interested). I prefer the plain version I've listed though.

Lasts well in the fridge, if you can stretch it out that long, it's very more-ish.

Enjoy!

Healthy chocolate crackles, with coconut oil

Phew, so I've fiiiinally put a new template in. 

Wow, it's like drawing blood, it takes me ages to find something that suits me, I don't go for bright ones, except on other people's blogs haha, I don't really want graphics, I want two columns, one of them being wider than average, I want a white background for posting, I want decent size headings on my sidebar and I 'spose I'm just extra fussy.

 No kidding, right?

This one's not perfect, the text is a bit light but overall it does not offend me, which is the main thing. 

We'll see how it goes.

Aaaanyway, gotta share a recipe.

Remember chocolate crackles? Oh yeah, mmm mmm mmmmm.

Well, the original recipe contains copha, correct? Or, if you're in New Zealand, it's kremelta.

What is copha/kremelta? 

According to Wiki', it's a form of vegetable fat shortening made from hydrogenated coconut oil.

And, it contains soy.

Both big no nos when it comes to me cooking for my family.
(The hydrogenated part of the coconut oil is what's bad, coconut oil itself is lovely stuff)

So I did some tweaking and here is my version.

Chocolate crackles, done my way.

4 cups of wholewheat puffed rice

 (just plain, puffed, wholewheat rice. Found this in my regular grocery store in the health food aisle)

3/4 cup of icing sugar

(this was cut down from 1 cup, next time I'll try 2/3 cup and use fine ground rapadura)

1 cup of desiccated coconut

5 tablespoons of good quality cocoa powder

250 grams of coconut oil, melted

(I like using coconut oil, you can read about coconut oil on the Weston A. Price foundation site)

Method

Mix all ingredients together and spoon into paper cupcake cases.

Refrigerate till hard.

Store in the fridge or freezer.

And oh my, they are GOOD!

Next time I'll spoon them into my silicone cupcake molds, which I can never get cupcakes out of but these little guys pop out of their papers once they're refrigerated, so I'll save the paper and dump them straight in a box from the silicone molds instead.

Wholegrain puffed rice gives this treat just a little more nutrition than usual, it's a couple of steps closer to a whole food than rice bubbles, that's for sure.

And one more tip, be careful adding extra rice if your mixture appears too 'wet'. I've made this twice now and the 'wetter' mix I had the first time gives a much more melt-in-the-mouth experience, such as that of traditional chocolate crackles.

The second batch I made drier and it's more chewy and also more prone to falling apart, which the first batch did not.

Enjoy!

Ok, wanna see my recipe for coconut oil chocolate? Just as yummy as these chocolate crackles but grain free, great if you're paleo, or primal.


There is a link to it it my side bar or you can find it here: Coconut oil chocolate.

Remember to buy in bulk

Check out my jar of CHOCOLATE.

70% cocoa, delicious and healthy.
Haha, well, apparently a SMALL amount a day is healthy.

My plan is to only ever use the good stuff so my kids get used to eating that and will hopefully reject the crap stuff.

Is it wrong of me to request of family at Easter that they only give the kids dark chocolate? It doesn't need to be the highest quality, just not the sort with lots of extra sugar.....the sort which I used to LOVE (milky bar anyone?).

My smarties obsession maybe coming to an end too, as I move on to REAL chocolate. It's going hand in hand with my cupboards slowly emptying of anything with a complicated ingredients panel on it.

I'm trying to follow the "if my great grandmother wouldn't recognise it as food, don't eat it" way of eating. I also keep hearing "if it wasn't around 10 000 years ago don't eat it".

Did they have chocolate around that long ago? If not, I'm sticking with the grandmother eating idea.

Oooh, chocolate!

I decorated my latest cupcakes in the ever popular chocolate ganache and don't they look drool worthy?
They tasted impressive too, mmm mmmmmmmm.

Never made ganache? It's extremely simple:

Chocolate ganache

400 grams cooking chocolate, chopped
1 1/2 cups cream

• Bring the cream to boil in a heavy based saucepan.
• Place choc in a bowl and pour the hot cream over.
• Leave for 1 minute to soften, then stir using a small spatula.
• For a smooth surface, dip cupcakes in immediately.
• For a fluffy look, let it cool then apply with a knife.

If you want to make a chocolate sauce, just add more cream.


I've made some caramel cupcakes too, and they were delish, as expected. The cupcake recipe used this homemade caramel that I made and the caramel frosting should use up the remainder of that batch of caramel. Except, I may have to make more caramel to make the frosting because, ahem, I don't think I have quite enough...


Standby for the caramel cupcake recipe because they were gooooooood.
Note were...