Flourless Chocolate Cake

So my friend Becky has a birthday this week (Thursday, so head over there and wish her a good one!), and our game night group had a little celebration in her honor on Saturday. Since one of the couples in our group is gluten-free, I decided to bake a gluten-free cake for the gathering. And, since I've kind of mastered gluten-free cake mixes (thanks to Pamela!), I decided to branch out and try my hand at a gluten-free cake from scratch. That said, I've not worked up the courage to get into the various non-gluten flours, and decided instead to bake a flourless chocolate cake.

After googling and reading several recipes, I decided to use the Whole Foods recipe for the cake and Gluten Free Mommy's recipe for the frosting. Below, I've listed the recipes and instructions for both (how I did them) along with pictures! Believe me when I tell you that this was an incredibly easy, incredibly delicious cake to make. If you are looking for a gluten-free option, or just a fabulously rich chocolate cake, I definitely recommend this one!

Cake (from Whole Foods)--Note that this recipe is for one 8 inch layer. I mixed the batter for each layer seperately.

Ingredients:
8 oz. bittersweet chocolate
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 1/4 cup sugar
6 eggs
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted

Prepared cake pan: Cut a piece of waxed paper to the size of your cake pan. Place circle in the bottom of pan and Pam (or some other cooking spray) the entire pan. Whole Foods recommended a springform pan, but I just used a regular cake 8 inch round cake pan and it was fine.

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Melt butter and bittersweet chocolate in a small saucepan over low heat. Wisk throughout to keep chocolate from sticking. When it has melted completely, pour the melted chocolate/butter mixture into a medium/large mixing bowl. Add sugar and stir together. Then, wisk in eggs, one at a time. Finally, fold in the sifted cocoa powder until it is just mixed into the batter.

Pour batter into prepared cake pan.

Bake 35 minutes to 40 minutes. The center of the cake will rise and be kind of firm. When the cake is finished, set it on a rack to cool for about ten minutes, then invert it onto the cooling rack to remove from pan and continue to cool. Let cool at least an hour before attempting to frost.

Frosting (from Gluten Free Mommy)--Note that I made two batches to completely cover a three-layer cake.

Ingredients:

2 cups heavy cream
6 tablespoons confectioners sugar

4 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon bourbon vanilla

Directions:

Place heavy cream into mixing bowl. Add confectioners sugar, cocoa powder and vanilla. Honestly, I just threw all the ingredients into the mixing bowl of my Kitchen-Aid stand mixer, set it to a six and walked away for a few minutes. It definitely got past the 'soft peaks' stage mentioned Gluten Free Mommy's instructions to more of a mousse-like texture, but it worked well for my purposes.

To frost this cake, I trimmed the crusty edges off of each layer (notice in the picture of the inverted cake how it looks a little like a pyramid) and stacked, adding frosting in between each layer. Then, I topped the cake with the frosting and used the remainder to cover the sides. Finally, I added raspberries and blackberries to the top of the cake.

Understand that three layers of this cake, even a small slice, will be very rich. J commented that he was glad for the berries because they actually cut the richness. It isn't a particularly sweet cake, but all of that chocolate (24 oz of bittersweet chocolate and about four cups of unsweetened cocoa powder, not to mention 6 sticks of butter, if you weren't keeping count) do add up to one rich product. And yes, J strictly avoided carbs all day so he could have a small slice! Enjoy!!