Flourless Hazelnut and Chocolate Cake

There's a girl named S., at work who is a coeliac, that unfortunately means she cannot tolerate gluten in her diet so when she does eat things containing delicious gluten such as pasta, bread, beer or sausages, she gets bloated, has stomach pain and feels nauseated for days. If she chugged through this intolerance, in the future her intestines would've been so scarred as to cause malnutrition, a severe drop in iron levels, anaemia and she would be at a great risk of developing a lot of different cancers.

In any case, she's a smart girl and when diagnosed, she made the change to gluten free straight away. At the same time, she craves all those delicious gluteny things like doughnuts, cake, a good bread that is tall and all that fun stuff. Whenever we have stuff at work, either as a gift from patients or stuff bought in by the other nurses, she often can't have any because it contains gluten. Its become a lot easier these days but eating gluten free isn't easy.

I took pity on her and decided to make her a cake one day. This was one of the first cakes I baked when I started baking for work, its a very simple five ingredient cake. I got the recipe from Taste.com.  This is basically my go to recipe for chocolate cakes, and I add and change ingredients to it all the time. Its one of those great mix, pour and bake cakes that you can whip up in a flash, its dense, chocolately, very moist and has a great crumbly texture from the hazelnut meal. Somehow its also very light and quite tall for a gluten free cake due to the huge amount of eggs. Every time I bake this, someone asks for the recipe and I always forget to give to them, so Z., and H., here it is. S., for whom the cake was made, doesn't know how to make this cake because she valiantly resists all attempts for me to teach her how to cook.

Flourless Hazelnut and Chocolate Cake

Ingredients:
150g of butter, chopped
200g of milk cooking chocolate, broken up
3/4 cup of sugar
6 eggs
1 1/2 cups of hazelnut meal, sifted

Instructions:
1. Chop up all your chocolate and butter. Melt in a bowl that fits snugly above a boiling saucepan. Have your butter on the bottom so that melts and frequently ladle the butter onto the chocolate. Once melted and glossy, put aside and continue making the rest of the cake.

Melting chocolate in a saucepan is a mistake.

A chunky mistake.

2. Separate your eggs into two different bowls. Line a 22cm cake tin and heat your oven to 150C.

Unskillful separation

3. Add the sugar to the yolks and whip/beat until thick, pale and fluffy.

Yep.

Its the colour of beige!

4. Pour in the chocolate and briefly mix.

Glossy

5. Sift the hazelnut meal onto of the wet mixture. Endure how long it takes, you'll find clumps of hazelnut everywhere which you can break up, you get a bit more air into the mixture and ensures an even mix. When you get to the last 1-2cms of thicker bits, either discard or use in the cake up to you.

Chunky!

6. Beat your egg whites into soft peaks.

This fluffy.

7. Fold 1/3 into the hazelnut chocolate mixture. Fold gently and once incorporated, fold in the other 2/3s gently. 

8. Put into your prepared cake tin and bake at 150C for 40-50 minute until you can poke a skewer through the cake and come up with a few damp crumbs.