Sunday, February 15, 2009

Flourless chocolate cake for dummies

Today I tried the chocolate "cake in a cup" recipe from the endlessly entertaining Papilles Et Pupilles blog. I was a little dubious because you cook it in a microwave, which I'm not a big fan of. Anyway, I tried it - and it was so easy and scrumptious that I'm shamelessly lifting her recipe and posting it here. The original recipe (in French, and much more humorous than mine!) is here.

Ingredients (makes 2 cupcake-sized individual cakes):
  • 1 egg
  • 40g sugar (4 tablespoons)
  • 25g cocoa powder (2 tablespoons)
  • 20g ground hazelnuts (2 tablespoons)
  • 25g vegetable oil e.g. canola (4 tablespoons)
  • milk (1 tablespoon)
Substitutions:
  • I ran out of unsweetened cocoa powder and used an aztec chocolate mix (with chile and cinammon); that was a happy accident and turned out delicious.
  • I didn't have hazelnuts and replaced them with unsalted pistachios. I ground them with the sugar so that they wouldn't turn into a paste in the food processor. That turned out very well, too.
How-to:
  1. Mix the dry ingredients together
  2. Mix in the egg, oil and milk
  3. Grease a couple of cups or ramekins
  4. Pour the batter in, not all the way to the top as the cakes will rise
  5. Put in the microwave for 2 minutes or so. It's a good idea to check the cake after 1 minute 1/2: if it's still soggy, put it back in for 30 more seconds. Don't overcook it as it will get dry.
  6. Eat it while it's still warm
That's it! It's virtually impossible to screw up, takes 10 minutes tops from start to stomach, and it's disturbingly delicious (and I am way way way picky when it comes to desserts...)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

thank you! i'll try this soon!

Todd Kopriva said...

I just tried this, but I substituted butter for canola oil. I liked it!

Beatrice said...

You can't go wrong with butter :)