Bank holidays mean two things for me: excessive sleeping and a chance to get creative in the kitchen. I was a lucky bunny this weekend as I was fed by others, three evenings in a row. Yes, THREE EVENINGS. For one of the evenings, I thought maybe I should show willing and bake a little sweet treat for desert.

I used to bake A LOT. When I first moved up to Birmingham I went into some sort of baking frenzy. To the point where I set up Connie’s Cake Emporium (yeah, the website is still live but I no longer bake to order so please don’t call me to order anything). It all came to a natural end when I got a proper full time job. Turns out juggling full time work (with a commute to a whole other city) and baking to-order meant that I got very little sleep. Unfortunately, the baking had to give.

Having moved last year and not having a functioning kitchen for about 6 months, I didn’t get to bake at all. In fact, I think I lost my baking mojo a little bit. So it was a bit of a relief this weekend when I got a bit of time to get back into the swing of baking. However, all was not well.

Now, I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with pastry. It turns out great if I wing it (e.g. don’t weigh the ingredients) but as soon as I follow a recipe… may the wrath be upon me. I am a big fan of Rachel Allen so I figured, why not try her Passionfruit and Lemon Tart? I should have known it was going to be a fail when I couldn’t find any passionfruit, a super lemony tart it was going to have to be. The recipe itself was really easy to follow and assemble, until the actual baking part.

I followed the recipe and all was well until the part where I had to take it out of the oven… it still looked really wobbly. According to Rachel, the tart should only wobble ‘a little bit’. WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN? To me, the tart was still very wobbly so I put it back in the oven. BIG MISTAKE. Because this happened:

Yes. somehow I managed to make a lemon quiche instead of a tart. This simply will not do. In hindsight, I should have just taken it out when it was, to me, still ‘quite wobbly’. Lesson learnt so let’s move on.

As the Lemon Quiche was not beautiful enough to take to a dinner party, I decided to bung together a flourless chocolate cake instead. Dead simple recipe, can’t get it wrong. Phew, those were not my famous last words. Turns out that Delicious magazine haven’t published the recipe online so here it is (slightly adjusted because I used all dark chocolate instead of half dark and half milk), typed by my own fingers, just for you all:

Ingredients

• 300g dark chocolate
• 250g butter (A WHOLE BLOCK!), plus some extra to grease
• 200g caster sugar
• 4 large eggs, separated (free range, obvs)
• 1tsp vanilla essence/vanilla bean paste
• 1/2 tsp cream of tartar

You will also need a 23cm springform cake tin with the base lined and sides greased. An oven will help too.

1. Preheat your oven to 180ºC/160º fan/gas mark 4. Put the chocolate and butter in a heavy-based saucepan and melt on a low heat. Once melted, add 100g of the sugar and stir. Put the pan aside to cool slightly before transferring mixture into a large mixing bowl. Proceed to add the vanilla and egg yolks – mix well but do not beat.

2. Now, I have the luxury of a Kitchen Aid with a balloon whisk attachment – if you don’t have one, a hand-held electric beater will be as good. Shove the egg whites in a super clean bowl (the tiniest bit of fat will be problematic for the meringue mix) and whisk the hell out of it. When it becomes foamy, add your cream of tartar. Continue whisking until you get stiff peaks – when you lift your whisk out of the mix, the egg whites should stand stiff and upright. Whisk in the remaining 100g of sugar, one tablespoon at a time until you get a delightfully thick, white, glossy meringue.

 

3. Mix a spoonful of your meringue mix into your chocolate mixture to ‘loosen’ it. Continue to fold in the remaining meringue in 4-5 additions. Use a large metal spoon and a figure-of-eight motion, scrape the sides of the bowl, then fold the mix over the top of itself, giving the bowl a quarter turn each time. Don’t forget to scrape the bottom of your bowl to make sure you’ve incorporated all that chocolately goodness.

4. Spoon the batter into your cake tin and bake for 40 minutes or until the mixture has risen and starts to crack on the top. Don’t worry about too many cracks – they will become crevices for holding cream/ice cream. Cool the cake in the tin – serve warm or at room temperature with dairy goodness of your choice!

Word of advice: the cake will deflate A LOT but fret not, it will taste real good.

Oh my days this cake is like a really intense brownie. But better. Slightly crumbly, rich but incredibly light considering that each mouthful contains about a tablespoon of butter. We ate this with a cup of tea but it would benefit from pouring cream, ice cream, or even custard if you dare. A real easy, faff-free recipe!