Flourless Chocolate Cake
Aaaaaaaaand it's April. And Passover is in less than a week.
So yeah, I think it's an appropriate time to feature a Passover dessert recipe. Especially when that dessert recipe is this flourless chocolate cake.
Honestly, if you were representing this recipe to me instead of the other way around, you would have had me at "flourless." Because pretty much every recipe I've made that's flourless has this magical quality to it that makes it rich and super flavorful and intense and delicious. Like these breakfast bars and these almond butter cookies and these peanut butter bars.
But also, all the flourless recipes mentioned above use nut butter to replace the flour (and butter/oil). Not this recipe. Not this flourless chocolate cake. This chocolate cake is really and truly flourless.
There are five main ingredients in this flourless chocolate cake. Plus salt and vanilla extract, but those aren't considered "main ingredients." Well, in my book they're main ingredients, because they act as major flavor enhancers to desserts. But salt and vanilla extract don't usually change the makeup and affect the structure of a recipe. Enhance? Definitely. But completely essential? Not really.
My point being, there are five absolutely necessary ingredients in this recipe. Just five. And these five ingredients (plus the salt and vanilla hehe) create the most wonderful flourless chocolate cake evaaaaa.
This flourless chocolate cake is so rich. Much richer than your average chocolate cake made with flour. And it's so rich because there's no flour (or leavening agents) fluffing up the cake and interfering with the intense flavor and natural fudginess that occurs when you combine chocolate and sugar and eggs and butter (or in our case, coconut oil.)
Oh yeah, this flourless cake is also dairy-free. Yep, coconut oil replaces the butter. You can use butter if you'd like, but if you want to go the non-dairy route, coconut oil is just as good.
This chocolate cake is also very dense and fudgy. I'd say more dense and fudgy than a brownie, even. And why is "fudgy" STILL not a real word?!!!
And the cake's also got a super intense chocolate flavor because that flavor is derived from not one, but two sources: melted chocolate and cocoa powder. And to balance out that cocoa bitterness, there's just the right amount of sugar added.
Did I mention that this flourless chocolate cake is also a one-bowl, quick and easy recipe? Oh, I didn't? Well, it is.
Melt your chocolate and coconut oil together in a bowl, whisk in the rest of the ingredients, and drop the batter into a round pan. All done.
You could also dust the cake with cocoa powder once it's out of the oven. Fancy-fancy. But we're not counting that cocoa dusting as an extra ingredient, because 1 - it's not a necessary addition, and because 2 - we already used cocoa in the actual cake, so we don't have to count it again, right?
One bowl, five-ingredient, quick, rich, gooey, dense, fudgy, intense flourless chocolate cake. Passover, you can come now. The people are ready to be redeemed.
flourless chocolate cake
Yield: 8" cake
1 cup bittersweet (50-70%) chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup coconut oil (can substitute butter)
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 eggs
1/2 cup cocoa powder
-cocoa powder for garnish, optional
Preheat oven to 350 F. Line and grease an 8" round pan well.
In a large bowl, melt the chocolate and coconut oil in the microwave in short intervals, or over a double boiler.
Mix in the sugar, salt, and vanilla extract until smooth. Whisk in the eggs, one at a time. Stir in the cocoa powder last.
Pour batter into prepared pan, smoothing top with your spatula. Bake cake for 30 minutes (toothpick inserted shouldn't be clean, it should have moist crumbs on it - cake should be fudgy).
Let cake cool before inverting onto a plate and flipping right side up. Using a sifter, dust with cocoa powder if desired.
Adapted from food.com
