Chocolate Cake with Olive Oil
Lately I've gotten really into watching videos by Ludo Lefebvre -- he's the perfect combination of pretty hilarious, slightly elitist about French cuisine, all while making cool dishes that home cooks could feasibly make. I saw this recipe and I really wanted to recreate it. I would say it turned out pretty well! I actually did make one small addition: the espresso powder, which I add to just about anything chocolate flavored to enhance the flavor of the chocolate. Interestingly, Ludo actually paired the cake with a grey goose espresso martini. Topped with a bit of olive oil and sea salt, which might seem like a strange combination, but it works beautifully. The texture comes out really light, almost like a hybrid between a cake and a souffle. The one small mistake I made is that I should have flipped it upside down when unmolding and before slicing - some of the center pieces broke off and didn't lend itself to as nice of a slice. But otherwise, turned out well, and I would recommend giving it a try!
Active Time: 40 min
Total Time: 1 hr 30 min
Ingredients
> dark chocolate, ~70% cacao (400g)
> unsalted butter (400g)
> eggs (8)
> granulated sugar (300g)
> all-purpose flour (120g)
> baking soda (3 tsp)
> espresso powder (1 tsp)
> extra virgin olive oil
> fleur de sel
Instructions
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F
2. Grease and butter the side of a 9-inch cake tin.
3. Chop the chocolate and unsalted butter into cubes, and slowly melt & mix in a mixing bowl set over simmering water (like a double boiler). Continue to stir and mix until fully incorporated and smooth.
4. In a separate mixing bowl, combine eggs and granulated sugar. Whisk thoroughly until the mixture doubles in volume and turns pale. Add the flour a spoonful at a time (mixing), then add the baking powder and espresso powder.
5. Mix in the melted chocolate, then pour it all into the cake tin.
6. Bake for roughly 35-40 minutes in the oven. The cake is cooked when a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.
7. Let cool for 15 minutes.
8. To serve: cut the cake into slices, set them on plates, and pour some extra virgin olive oil and top with a bit of fleur de sel.
Notes/Tips:
> In reality, I found that the above proportions gave me slightly more than enough batter for a 9-inch cake. You could scale down everything by roughly 25%, (e.g. 320g unsalted butter, 6 eggs, etc). Conveniently, I happened to have a 4-inch springform mold as well, so I just made a second mini-cake on the side.
> Espresso powder wasn't in the original recipe (although Ludo had it with some Grey Goose Espresso martini), but I decided to just go ahead and added it, espresso goes beautifully with chocolate.
> Make sure you use a relatively high cacao content chocolate! I used a mixture of 56% and 100% cacao chocolate, which ultimately yielded somewhere around 70% to 75%.