All You Need is Chocolate, Butter and Eggs

February 14, 2016 12:45 PM

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Flourless Chocolate Torte but Were Afraid to Ask
posted by ShooBoo (29 comments total)

I only got a little way into the essay and I had to stop because I was drooling all over my phone. I will be reading this, then I will be making the torte, then I will be eating it all by myself.
posted by billiebee at 12:51 PM on February 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

I had a mini flourless chocolate something-or-other once. It was delicious, but man, was it rich.
posted by jonmc at 12:55 PM on February 14, 2016

I have made this! The most recent time was at a friend's house in British Columbia, and she doesn't cook much, and she didn't have an electric mixer! I had to beat the eggs by hand. Oh the humanity.

And I melted the butter and chocolate in the microwave, too. It still turned out great.
posted by suelac at 12:55 PM on February 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

I am slightly obsessed with Rose Levy Beranbaum. She has a master's degree in Home Ec, and she wrote her thesis on sifting, proving conclusively through scientific analysis that it is insufficient to shift dry ingredients. One must also use a whisk. How could you not love her?

I may have to make this tonight.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 12:56 PM on February 14, 2016 [6 favorites]

I've been making the America's Test Kitchen flourless chocolate cake recipe for years with great success, but it differs in some particulars from this. Thanks so much for this! If you need me, I'll be in the kitchen....
posted by Floydd at 1:00 PM on February 14, 2016

And hazelnuts! Like a cup, ground.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:01 PM on February 14, 2016

oOo
posted by lalochezia at 1:10 PM on February 14, 2016

Will I ruin the torte if the chocolate is 65%?

Can I replace the butter with kosher paracord?

Really I'm asking because Armin my lebanese neighbor makes his own chocolate but it is 65%.

Asking for a friend: Is it dangerous to get torte on or in your genitals?

If an allergic person is accidently feed one or two of these cakes, how fast will they die?

Why does step 7 suddenly require hair salon or arsonist's equipment?

Friend again: If your household pet - maybe it is a dog, maybe it is a cat, I don't really know - accidentally licks the torte off your genitals, should either of us go to the hospital/vet??

Why does it say truffle torte when truffles aren't listed in the ingredients? Maybe I've had a bad day and really looking forward to have some neurotically baked truffle torte but no there are no truffles so I will just cry myself to sleep thank you very much.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:11 PM on February 14, 2016 [14 favorites]

I can highly the following recipe; I've made this dozens of times now: Chocolate Souffle for two.

I should make a batch now.
posted by el io at 1:13 PM on February 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

This could be interesting! However, I would have to rapidly evict it from the house and serve it to my colleagues, lest I devour the whole thing.
posted by thomas j wise at 1:13 PM on February 14, 2016

The interviewer missed what Delia Smith called the tyranny of tins - if you don't use the right size tin it won't work. A few words from Berenbaum here. Not simple.
posted by StephenB at 1:15 PM on February 14, 2016

We make a version of this for Passover (sans the tablespoon of flour and it's fantastic to know why it's not necessary), but with cognac. People are surprised (and try to hide their really sad face) when we only serve these teeny-tiny slices, and then they take a bite, and while everyone cleans their plates, only 1 person in 10 can handle seconds. It's like a dark chocolate punch to the head.
posted by Mchelly at 1:25 PM on February 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

So I actually went looking for the master's thesis about sifting, and here it is. But I just read it all (admittedly not that closely) and I can't actually find any results? It looks like a paper detailing the design of an experiment, but not its actual execution. Did the actual results ever get published?
posted by chrominance at 1:26 PM on February 14, 2016

For me, this is one of the hardest things to veganize. *sobs*
posted by Kitteh at 1:38 PM on February 14, 2016

Interesting.

I make David Lebovitz's Chocolate Orbit Cake (or Chocolate Fool Cake) and it shares the same three ingredients. I think my absolute favourite thing about these three ingredient cakes is that no one EVER believes how simple they are.

ALSO, if you want to, sprinkle large flakes of sea salt over your finished slice. Smoked salt works extremely well. Don't know why you'd want to ruin it with raspberry sauce.
posted by Neronomius at 2:08 PM on February 14, 2016

The conclusion for the thesis is on page 33.
posted by blue_beetle at 2:08 PM on February 14, 2016

I've made this when it was called 'Chocolate Nemesis' in the River Cafe Cook Book (so influential in the UK).

You can make an easier version from the River Cafe Cook Book Easy, to which they gave the excellent name 'Easy Small Nemesis.' It was fantastic.
posted by colie at 2:12 PM on February 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

Anyone know Latin? Considering having this thread title for my house words, should I ever become ennobled.
posted by Diablevert at 2:13 PM on February 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

Why does it say truffle torte when truffles aren't listed in the ingredients? Maybe I've had a bad day and really looking forward to have some neurotically baked truffle torte but no there are no truffles so I will just cry myself to sleep thank you very much.

Truffles the mushroom have round shapes, so truffles the confections were named after them because they try for a similar shape. Chocolate truffles contain no actual truffle.
posted by kafziel at 2:20 PM on February 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

Hmm. I wonder if this will work with the raspberry flavored chocolate my boyfriend got me for Valentine's Day. TIME TO EXPERIMENT.
posted by Soliloquy at 2:29 PM on February 14, 2016

I once won a bet for my mother against her chef boyfriend by eating a whole slice of Narsai David's Chocolate Decadence all by myself. I was 4. He thought it would be too rich. He was wrong.
posted by monopas at 5:43 PM on February 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

Would it work to make this in a regular round metal cake pan and just live with the lack of presentation? Because I WANT but the whole springform with tinfoil thing is kind of a deal breaker for me.
posted by eggkeeper at 6:21 PM on February 14, 2016

I've done flourless chocolate cake in a normal pan, although my pan had high sides. I think it might be too tall for a layer-cake pan. I still did the parchment at the bottom and greased the whole thing really well. It's really hard to fuck up flourless chocolate cake, because it's going to taste good no matter what.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:03 PM on February 14, 2016

The conclusion for the thesis is on page 33.

Page 33 of the PDF (which is labeled "31") shows a sample chart used to record objective measures of each resulting cake. It has no results that I can see. Page 35 of the PDF (which is the actual page 33 according to the table of contents) says "Conclusions," but only offers potential conclusions dependent on the outcome of the experiment (i.e. "If highly sifted samples rate over-all high, then one may conclude that sifting does indeed affect the quality of the cake"). I can't find the part where the outcome of the experiment is actually explained (i.e. highly sifted samples did, in fact, rate highly in all sensory tests).

This is kind of a thread derail, though, so I'll stop here. Maybe The Cake Bible has more insight. I'm sure it'll have more cake recipes and methods, which is never a bad thing.
posted by chrominance at 7:36 PM on February 14, 2016

I would expect the springform pan is used so you can actually get the torte out of the pan. But if you don't mind scooping it out with a spoon, I'm sure any similarly-sized pan would work.
posted by inparticularity at 9:19 PM on February 14, 2016

Asking for a friend: Is it dangerous to get torte on or in your genitals?

Depends on who or what you're with.



PHWOAR
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:20 PM on February 14, 2016

Would it work to make this in a regular round metal cake pan and just live with the lack of presentation? Because I WANT but the whole springform with tinfoil thing is kind of a deal breaker for me.

I haven't made this one, but I've made essentially the same one (different ratio, darker chocolate + sugar, a bit of alcohol -- usually Kahlua, I leave out the flour), and you can make it in any normal sort of pan, the springform and tinfoil is only necessary if you are doing it in a water bath which feels like a step further than I want (also, the texture I get in my favourite recipe is the texture I prefer so I am not going to switch to something with a moussey texture which I don't generally like.

But if you want to make her recipe, I'd either do it in a regular cake pan with parchment paper (prevents leaks but harder to get out) or in the springform but with a pan of water on a lower level -- it will introduce the moisture that way.
posted by jeather at 3:30 PM on February 15, 2016

Asking for a friend: Is it dangerous to get torte on or in your genitals?

Yes! There are places sugar does not belong, geeze. I suppose unless you disobeyed and made your torte with unsweetened instead of bittersweet chocolate.
posted by nat at 5:23 PM on February 15, 2016

I've been making this cake for years - it's very forgiving actually. I make it in a cake pan or a loaf pan or a springform - made a 1/3 size version on Friday with one of her variations - where you add a layer of hot fudge sauce in the middle of the batter and serve with brandied cherries - best variation of the many in her book. Her recipes are always written in far more fussy detail than seems necessary to me -can be more relaxed and still get great results.
posted by leslies at 6:10 PM on February 15, 2016 [1 favorite]