Ina Garten-Inspired Flourless Chocolate Cake

Compiled by Igor Kukolj, Editor. Nobody here has cooked this — how these are made.

People bake this, watch the middle collapse into a crater as it cools, and assume they did something wrong. They did not.

With no flour there is no gluten and no starch — nothing to set into a permanent structure. What holds the cake up in the oven is air beaten into eggs, trapped by melted chocolate. As it cools that air contracts, and the middle sinks. Every correctly made flourless chocolate cake does this. The crater is where you put the cream.

Which means the usual doneness tests do not apply. Bake it until the edges are set and the centre still has a distinct wobble — a skewer will not come out clean and should not.

Beat the eggs to the ribbon stage

This is the entire leavening. Whisk the eggs and sugar until the mixture is pale, tripled in volume, and a lifted whisk leaves a trail on the surface that holds for three seconds. It takes five to eight minutes with a machine. Under-beaten eggs give a dense, greasy cake.

Fold, and lose as little air as you can

The chocolate mixture is heavy and will knock the air straight back out. Stir a third of the egg foam in to slacken it first, then fold the rest through in two additions with a spatula, cutting down the middle and sweeping round. Stop while a few streaks remain.

Espresso powder, not coffee flavour

A tablespoon does not make the cake taste of coffee. Caffeine and the roasted compounds in coffee sharpen the perception of chocolate — it reads as more chocolatey, not as mocha. It is the cheapest improvement available to any chocolate recipe.

Storing

Four days at room temperature, covered, and it is better on day two when the texture has settled to something between a cake and a truffle. It freezes whole for three months.