Any excuse to make my favourite flourless chocolate cake, and serve it with a tangy sweet passion fruit sauce
Was this just an excuse the make my favourite chocolate cake again? Probably.
I can’t claim to have invited the idea of this flourless chocolate cake, but this IS the same cake I cooked for my finals exam at chef school almost 10 years ago now. The batter – which is easily mixed together in a food processor – is made from melted chocolate, butter and sugar. Whipped egg whites are then folded in for volume and a mousse like texture when set – the cake is therefore best serve chilled.
Despite cooking it frequently over the last 10 years I didn’t actually have this cake written up on my website. I was reminded recently whilst devouring a dessert in a restaurant that passion fruit and chocolate are a fantastic combination, so this gave me an idea and excuse to write up the cake recipe as well as trying something new with passion fruit to go with it.
Passion fruit is a fruit that I love the flavour of, but don’t get the opportunity to use that often. It’s imported to the UK from tropical climates, of course, but eat the seasons (an excellent resource FYI), tells me its best season is December to February. That’ll do.
You’ll need a lot of passion fruit to create a small amount of juice to turn into the sauce, so if you’d rather just serve the cake with a little fresh pulp instead (you’ll need far less for this) then that’s that’s totally fine by me.
- 200g 70% dark chocolate, finely chopped
- 140g caster sugar (white or golden)
- 125mls boiling water
- 170g butter, cubed
- 4 eggs, separated
- ¼ tsp salt
- 5 large passion fruit (around 8 tbsp juice)
- 1 lemon, juiced (approx 2 tbsp juice)
- 2 tbsp white caster sugar
- knob butter
- 1 passion fruit, seeds scooped out
- Crème fraîche
- Preheat the oven to 160°C(fan)/180°C/350°F. Grease and line a 10. inch spring form cake tin.
- Add the chopped chocolate and sugar into a food processor, and blitz until broken down into crumbs. Add the boiling water, cubed butter, egg yolks and salt. Blitz again until you end up with a smooth batter.
- In a large bowl, whisk the 4 egg whites until stiff peaks form, then add them into the food processor. Process very briefly (around 10 seconds) until the whites have just mixed in. You don't want to knock all that air out!
- Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake in the oven for 45 minutes until the top feels set and doesn't give too much when pressed. The cake will crack, and sink quite a lot as it cools - this is all fine! When fully cooled remove from the tin and chill in the fridge until ready to eat. Serve cold!
- To make the sauce, split your passion fruits in 2 and scoop out the seeds. Pass through a sieve, to separate the seeds from the juice, discard the seeds
- Transfer the passion fruit juice to a small pan, add in the lemon juice and sugar. Stir and cook over a medium-high heat for 4-5 minutes, till the sugar has dissolved and thickened the juice into a thick drizzle able syrup. Add a knob of butter to add gloss. Transfer to a small container and chill till ready to use.
- Drizzle a little passion fruit sauce over each serving plate, top with a wedge of cake, a scoop of crème fraîche and a few extra fresh passion fruit seeds