Flourless Chocolate Meringue Cake
Although it doesn’t quite look like the picture, it still looks good.
I’ve never had had a meringue cake, so I’m curious
Time:2 hours 10 minutes
Difficulty: 1/5
Ingredient Availability: 5/5
I’ve never had a flourless cake that I’m aware of. I know that I’ve never made one. Further, I’m not the biggest chocolate cake fan. Sure it’s usually not bad, but I think I prefer other cakes with less strong flavors for a lack of a better word. This recipe caught my eye with its relatively short ingredient list and the look of the swirled top. Meringue in and on a cake is an interesting concept to me and I thought it would be worth a try.
Key Ingredients & Omissions:
Nothing here is particularly key
This is yet another recipe where every ingredient is essentially required, so I used everything that was called for. As far as key ingredients, I would say that you use a better quality chocolate, as that is where the majority of the flavor comes from. Other than that, you don’t need to worry about the ingredients too much.
Tools:
Spring Form Pan
Hand Mixer
Cooking Review:
Prep: 20 minutes
The prep for this recipe included oiling the springform pan and parchment paper, setting up a double boiler, and chopping the chocolate.
Chocolate Mixture: 13 minutes
After I melted the chocolate in the double boiler along with the oil, salt, coffee, vanilla extract, and sugar, I whisked in the egg yolks until smooth. The almond flour was added next. I didn’t notice the mixture being broken, but I still added 1/4 cup of water, which did make it smoother.
Meringue: 10 minutes
Making the meringue consisted of beating the egg whites with some salt to combine them before beating at a higher speed while streaming in the remaining sugar to thicken the meringue. I continued to beat the meringue until I achieved stiff peaks.
Mixing batter: 15 Minutes
I scooped a cup of the meringue and set it aside then folded in the remaining meringue one half at a time. The batter was then poured into the prepared springform pan and topped with the reserved meringue. I used toothpicks to swirl the meringue into the batter on top.
Baking: 1 hour 6 minutes
I let the cake bake for an hour and 6 minutes. At that point, a toothpick came out of the center of the cake cleanly and the top was cracked.
The center did collapse after cooling
Analysis:
After getting past the initial crisp crunch of the meringue on top of the cake, I was met with an extremely soft and tender cake. It was very moist and smooth (almost gooey), which was a nice contrast to the crisp top and edges. Speaking of the top, it provided a slight toasty flavor, which paired nicely with the nice chocolatey flavor of the cake. I wouldn’t say that the chocolate flavor was complex, but I honestly never have experienced complex chocolatey flavors in a cake. Overall, this is a good cake and an easy recipe. Given both of those facts, I’ll give this recipe an 8/10. I wouldn’t mind making this a go to chocolate cake recipe.
