Ingredients: |
Ingredients: 185 g self-raising flour
30 g cocoa powder
250 g unsalted butter
2 tablespoons crème de framboise
or 1 tablespoon eau de framboise
95 g caster sugar
95 g muscovado sugar
250 g dark chocolate
185 ml black coffee and 185 ml water,
or instant coffee made up with 2 teaspoons
instant coffee and 370 ml water
2 eggs, beaten slightly
250 g raspberries, plus more to serve.
180 degrees C / gas mark 4 [350 degrees in Fahrenheit]
22-23 cm springform. [8-9"]
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Directions: |
Directions:This recipe is easier to make than it may sound. Its your basic flourless chocolate cake, but with some flour. And lots of raspberries. The key is having a really good heavy sauce pan in which to melt and blend (step 3) all the wet ingredients.
The recipe as typed also requires a scale, as the recipe comes from England (it's a Nigella Lawson recipe) where they use weights not volume. I tried to find an american version on the internet but the only ones I could find were, oddly, just wrong. I'm going to assume that you are all such prolific cooks that you have scales...
1) Butter the springform pan and line the base with baking
parchment.
2) Sift the flour, salt, and cocoa powder together in a bowl and set aside.
3) Put the butter, framboise, sugars, chocolate, and coffee and water (yes, Coffee AND Water), in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and stir over a low gentle heat until everything melts and is thickly, glossily smooth.
[Its key that it is all glossy and smooth - if the ingredients are separated, the cake doesn't work so well. And if you don't have framboise, you can probably leave it out, or maybe mush a few berries over some heat with some sugar till you have a tablespoon of concentrated raspberryness?]
4) Stir this mixture into the sifted flour and cocoa. Beat well until
all is smooth and glossy again, then beat in the eggs. This will be
runny - don't panic, and don't add more flour; the chocolate itself
sets as it cooks and then cools.
5) Pour into the prepared pan until you have covered the base with about an inch of the mixture, and then cover with raspberries and pour the rest of the mixture on top -- Its basically a chocolate/raspberry/chocolate layer cake -- you may have to push some of the raspberries back under the cake batter by hand because they tend to float.]
6) Bake 45-50 minutes, until the top is firm and probably cracked; don't try to test by poking in a skewer as you don't want to come out clean; the grunge is what the cake is about.
7) When it's ready, take the cake out of the oven and put on a rack. Leave in the pan for 15 minutes and then turn out. I find its easiest to have an extra plate - unhinge the springform gently, lifting it off. Put the extra plate on the top of the cake, flip quickly, then pull off the bottom of the springform pan and the parchment paper. Then flip the whole cake back onto the plate you want to serve it on.
8) When you're ready to eat, sprinkle some raspberries on top, dust the cake with the confectioners' sugar. Serve with the additional berries if you have any left over. Strongly consider vanilla ice-cream. Actually, just plan on it. |
Personal
Notes: |
Personal
Notes: This cake was the girls' favorite for birthdays and special occasions. They asked for it so many times I had to reserve it for those special days. It also was the first cake from scratch I learned how to make, and it was early in those wonderful London years when I had time to learn how to cook, so it's special to me too - it reminds me of everything great about taking some time to cook up a cake for your kids.
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