Week 28: Flourless Chili Chocolate Cake

A few months ago I baked a flourless chocolate cake. As I noted in that post, the recipe came highly recommended by my friend, Linda, who baked my Dr. Devil’s Food Cake for James Earl Jones. And she got the recipe from her friend, Lynne Silver. It was delightful. So when I wanted to make a chili chocolate cake, doing a flourless version based on that recipe seemed logical.

It was my dad’s birthday a few weeks ago. And I recently baked him a pistachio cake for Father’s Day. Luckily, Dad has an adventurous palette, so I wasn’t at a loss for ideas for his birthday. He likes spicy stuff and so do I, so I knew we’d both enjoy a flourless chili chocolate cake.

For this one, since I was adapting a recipe I tried before, I was kind of flying blind. I knew how to make the flourless chocolate cake to perfection, but I wanted to make sure it didn’t have just a hint of spice. This cake needed to roar.

Here’s my mise en place. I opted for chili flavored chocolate in place of plain, dark chocolate. It’s delicious on its own, if you haven’t already tried it. What I left out of the photo was the chili powder I used to supplement the flavored chocolate to achieve enough heat.

Since I last baked a flourless chocolate cake, Linda, my friend who passed the recipe along in the first place, gave me a double boiler – a real double boiler – not the makeshift kind I’d been working with for years! I broke it in by melting the chili chocolate and butter.

After a few minutes, the mixture was smooth and shiny.

I set the chocolate mixture aside and whipped the egg whites till soft peaks formed. Next I sifted in the sugar, salt, and cocoa powder. At this point, I began tasting the batter to figure how much chili powder I wanted to add. It was a process resulting in a lot of dirty tasting spoons and a burning mouth. I stopped at 4 tablespoons of chili powder. I know it sounds like a lot, but it’s a matter of taste.

The final step was to fold in the whipped egg whites.

Once incorporated, I poured the batter into a parchment lined, greased 8″ pan.

The cake baked after about 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

Since I was bringing the cake to my parents’ home, I left the cake to cool in its pan and covered it with foil to be transported.

Once at my destination, it slid out of the pan pretty easily. I dusted it with powdered sugar and served it with whipped cream.

Forgive me for the grainy cell phone pic. I forgot my good camera at home.

Despite the 4 tablespoons of chili powder, the cake wasn’t as spicy as you might expect. As with the original version, it turned out really moist, with a brownie-like consistency. Yum. It was a hit.