The Food Site

It’s been awhile since I baked a flourless chocolate cake so recently, I decided to bake one. Mainly because I owe it to a diabetic friend who’s been drooling after this cake ever since I told her about the recipe! This is what made her pester me day and night to make it just for her.

So, late one night, I got down to baking this cake just for her. Since she’s diabetic and can’t take too much sweet stuff, I cut down on the sugar used and I substituted granulated sugar with brown sugar. I also used unsweetened cooking chocolate instead of the semi-sweet cooking chocolate.

I can’t stand the weird aftertaste of artificial sweeteners so I didn’t use that as replacement. Besides, using man-made chemicals (besides that there are many horror stories about artificial sweeteners) in our baking is just so wrong, well, except for chocolates which essentially aren’t chemicals, er, I think.

Alright, let’s get down to the details of baking this rich, dark flourless chocolate cake that has a thick, fudgy consistency.

Rich Dark Flourless Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

230g dark unsweetened chocolate (8oz), chopped for easier melting

110g butter (7 tbsp)

5 eggs, separated

2/3 cup brown sugar

1 tsp salt

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 170 Celsius or 325 F and line pan with parchment paper.

3. You can either place the bowl over a pot of boiling water to melt it or put it in your microwave for about 1 minute on high to melt it. Note: below is the dark cooking chocolate I used for this recipe.

5. Whisk till it is smooth before folding the melted chocolate mixture in. Make sure to combine well.

6. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites and salt together till you get soft peaks.

10. Pop the pan into the oven and bake for about 40 minutes.

You will notice that the cake is sorta flat instead of all puffed up. That’s because it does not have any flour in it so it is quite compact and very fudgy.

Once done, it is best to remove it from the pan and cool it on a wire rack. This is how ‘flat’ the cake is…

Since I reduced the sugar and used unsweetened chocolate, the cake turned out quite diabetic-friendly. It’s not sweet at all. In fact, it has a bit of bitterness (due to the 100% cacao content of the chocolate I used) BUT it is a hit at home.

And yes, after cutting it into slices, I gave some to my diabetic friend and she loved it! Of course, if you think bitter chocolate cake is really not up your alley, all you need to do is to use normal sugar and sweetened chocolate.

Oh and yes, do sprinkle some icing sugar on top before you serve. Purely for decoration purposes. My friend didn’t get the sugar dusting though.

If there’s anything I love more than chocolate, it’s peanut butter AND chocolate. So, just a few days after even the crumbs of the double chocolate chip cookies are gone, I made another type of cookies.

This time, I tried out the chocolate filled double delight peanut butter cookies recipe I found over at Baking Bites. I did some minor changes and the result is this…

These cookies are so darn good and rich, I can only eat one at a time! So, here’s the recipe:

Chocolate Filled Double Peanut Butter Cookies

Ingredients

Cookie dough

1 1/3 cups flour

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

1/2 tsp salt

6 tbsp butter, soften

1/2 cup brown sugar

4 tbsp palm sugar (gula melaka)

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

18 tbsp peanut butter

Topping

1/4 cup almond nibs

2 tbsp sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon powder

2 tbsp melon seeds

Filling

6 tbsp peanut butter

2 tbsp cocoa powder

3 tbsp icing sugar

3 tbsp granulated sugar

4 tbsp finely chopped dark chocolate

Instructions

For the cookie dough:

1. Sift flour, baking soda and salt together.

Note: I added some palm sugar because it has a special fragrant flavour you can’t get from any other sugar. If you don’t have it, you can always use white sugar (about 1/2 cup) instead.

5. Beat the mixture till well combined.

7. A smooth dough will form so spoon it onto a piece of parchment paper.

9. Refrigerate it for about 2 hours or till the dough harden.

Now, on to the cookie fillings:

11. Mix it around and you will get a smooth paste.

Finally, remove the dough from the fridge…

14. Flatten the dough on your palm, place the ball of filling in the centre and wrap the dough around the filling. Make sure the filling is completely covered. You can shape it into a small ball.

15.Place the toppings in a bowl and mix it around.

16. Then, roll the ball of dough in the bowl of toppings.

Make sure you leave more space around each ball as you will need to flatten it with the bottom of a glass or any cup with a flat bottom.

Also, preheat the oven to 190C (375F).Finally, bake the cookies for about 10 minutes or until it turns a golden brown.

Let it cool for a couple of minutes on the tray before moving the cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.

Let me tell you, these are so good,  all this trouble is really worth it. I was contemplating adding chocolate chips as the toppings but in the end, didn’t. Now, I know it would go great with it. Maybe next time…