Recipe
Serves 8-10
Adapted from the recipe by Jane Hornby at BBC Good Food Online, see the recipe here.
I've taken the flour out of her recipe and replaced it with more ground almonds, to give a lovely nutty sweetness that works with the darkness of the chocolate brilliantly.
200g unsalted butter, room temperature
200g caster sugar
200g dark chocolate, 70% cocoa solids (Green & Blacks recommended)
100g ground almonds
4 large eggs
quarter tsp salt
cocoa powder, for decoration
1. Turn oven to 180C (160 fan ovens), and line and grease a 20 or 23cm size cake tin.
2. Chop the chocolate and butter into small pieces and warm them in a pan over a gentle heat, until melted.
3. Whisk the eggs and sugar together for about 5 minutes until smooth and combined.
4. Add the melted chocolate and butter to the egg and sugar mixture, lightly stirring them together with a metal spoon.
5. Next throw in the ground almonds and a tiny bit of salt and very gently fold them into the batter.
6. Pour the batter into the prepared tin, and bake in the oven for approx 40 minutes, perhaps a little longer. You'll know it's done when the top bounces back under your finger. Don't be peturbed if the skewer hasn't come out clean, it's a dense, truffle sort of cake.
7. Leave in the tin to cool for 15 minutes. Then remove cake from the tin and dust with cocoa powder. It can be served still warm or when completely cool at room temperature. Serve with fruit, cream, whatever you fancy.
This torte was baked while idly listening to Jarvis Cocker's Sunday Service on BBC 6 Music.
Howdy Emalina
ReplyDeleteI'm making this tonight and can't WAIT! The great thing about being back in an office is that I now have a whole host of people to bake for.
The only snag is that one of my lovely new colleagues can't have flour OR gluten-free flour (no potato products, poor lamb). Is there a general rule of thumb about replacing flour with ground almonds?
Kx
Hey Katharine, sorry not to get back to you earlier. You don't need any flour for this recipe, the ground almonds create the most delicious rich and dense torte cake, so I hope the bake went well tonight, and happy eating tomorrow! x
ReplyDeleteHello! Well, I've never seen a cake disappear so fast - thanks for the fabulous recipe!
ReplyDeleteAnd sorry, I wasn't clear: I meant about replacing flour with almonds in other recipes. Is it OK just to swap in ground almonds?
Great news the cake was such a success, you obviously did a lovely bit of baking there Katharine!
ReplyDeleteYes it's easy to replace flour with ground almonds in many cake recipes. It creates a sweeter, denser crumb, less light and fluffy than cakes made with flour. You would need to gently fold in well beaten eggs to a cake batter, to help the cake rise. If you're replacing self raising flour with almonds then you can just add extra eggs to create the rise. x