Flourless Dark Mocha Cake

So this is the story of the best cake I've ever made, that everyone seems to love and why I hate it. Did you know I have a super sensitive ability to detect bitterness? I can't eat bitter melon, I don't drink coffee unless its in a frappe, diluted with a ton of milk and with heaps of sugar. I even take my tea white with like three sugars, this is one cup of tea. Yeah, I really can't stand bitter things.

My face when I taste something bitter

I also don't like desserts. Everyone knows this, hand me a bag of chips and I'd finish that thing solo. Cake? Will have a miserly slice taken off and then tossed into the bin when its super dry and gross. True fact, I once had a bar of Cadbury's Marvelous Creations in my fridge, it was there for six months before it was finished. Girls at work were like, "omg you have so much self restraint." Its not self restraint, its like waving lettuce at a shark or something, I'm just not interested.

This shark is an abomination

So why did I make it? I made it because a patient of mine the previous night had pulled me aside and thanked me profusely for looking after her and giving me a block of chocolate. So that block of chocolate was made into a cake that was full of love and appreciation. Maybe that's why the second form of this cake wasn't so great because it was made out of commissioned money from Mr M for Megababe, Z., and Mrs M, and some annoying kid ran into me at the market so it got all squished and gross.

I didn't like this cake. It was a very unsweet cake with a very bitter edge from the dark chocolate and mocha used. I wanted to make a chocolate and coffee cake that tasted like a hot cup of mocha coffee, baked or poured into a cake. Something that tasted like real coffee and would give you a buzz when you ate it. I was reading a lot of coffee cake reviews where they just added instant coffee and the flavour was really lackluster.You know what nurses like though? Chocolate and coffee.

Only thing we love more is gossip

I used my basic recipe for flourless hazelnut and chocolate cake, tasted a bit of it when it was raw and then rounded out the flavour with some cocoa powder and vanilla bean paste.

Flourless Dark Mocha Cake

Ingredients:
200g of 70% cocoa solids, dark chocolate
150g of butter, cubed
4 eggs, separated
3/4 cup of sugar
1/4 cup of cocoa powder
2-4 tablespoons of instant coffee*, dissolved in 60ml of hot water
1 teaspoon of vanilla bean paste/extract
1 1/2 cups of hazelnut meal

*If using a strong ground instant expresso use as little as 2 tablespoons. When I ran out of Nescafe Expresso, I used Nescafe Golden Rich Instant Roast instead and had to use 4 tablespoons to match the flavour. Otherwise two shots of expresso can be used.

The usual cohort

Instructions:
1. Chop your butter into cubes and break up your chocolate as finely as possible to reduce cooking time. In a large bowl that fits snugly above a saucepan of boiling water, melt your chocolate and butter together until melted and glossy.

The usual

So shiny

2. Line a 22cm cake tin. Heat oven to 150C. Separate your eggs.
3. Add sugar to yolks and beat until thick, pale and glossy.

An orange ying and yang basically

Pale and delicious

4. Add the melted butter and chocolate to the yolk mixture and mix until combined.

Glorious

5. Sift the cocoa powder on top of this yolk mixture, add the vanilla extract and stir to combine.

Rounds out the flavour

6. Dissolve your instant coffee in water and mix into the chocolate mixture.

Just some coffee

7.  Sift the hazelnut meal onto the chocolate mixture. With the final few chunky crumbs dump then into the mixture, or discard as wanted. Mix until just combined.

Pre hazelnut

Gritty

 8. Beat your egg whites to soft peaks and fold first 1/3 of the mixture into the chocolate mixture. Then fold the final 2/3 of the beaten egg whites.

Mixing!

Pretty colour

9. Pour into your cake tin and bake for 40-50 minutes. Skewer test should come out with slightly damp crumbs.