The Motorcycle (Food) Diaries
You may be wondering why I’m posting a photo of me on my bike on this blog, at this time of year. Here’s your answer: I’ve got a new article up over at Chef’s Blade, and it’s all about the joys of motorbikes and food. I’m hoping to write more of these as I get the chance. In the meantime, check it out, and hope to see you on the road sometime once it’s warmer! 
Chocolate Solves Everything!
A birthday’s coming up and you’re making a cake for someone who prefers not to eat carbs. What do you do? Obviously you want to make something that tastes good, but you also want to make sure it falls in line with the birthday-person’s wishes. After all, it wouldn’t be terribly kind of you to make a cake they couldn’t eat and/or would feel guilty about eating, would it? 
Enter the flourless chocolate cake. There are a lot of recipes for it; some of which call for sugar, and some of which don’t. Obviously, if you’re making one for a carb-conscious individual, you’ll want to cull the sugary recipes from your consideration right away. And as with anything else, there is no one right way to make a flourless chocolate cake.1 But in my experience, this is definitely one case where simpler really is better.
If you want to get into the technique of it, you’re essentially making a very rich chocolate custard. If you think of it in those terms, it’s incredibly simple. Use a good-quality semi-sweet or dark chocolate (depending on your mood, tastes, and the tastes of whomever you’re making it for), unsalted butter, eggs, and a good-quality vanilla, whisk all those eggs into a nice, frothy foam, fold it all together, and stick your springform pan into a lovely hot water bath in your oven. The thing about very simple recipes is that your ingredients should ideally be top-quality. Note that this doesn’t necessarily mean “expensive,” and it irks me more than a little when those things are erroneously equated.
Also, have faith in what you like, regardless of whether or not you’ve made a baked custard and/or feel comfortable making one. You can learn techniques and teach yourself things as you go, but no matter how much or little you think you know, you do know what you think tastes good. That knowledge will never fail you, as long as you have confidence in yourself.
As this cake is so simple, it doesn’t need a lot in the way of decoration. A simple dusting of a little powdered sugar, cocoa, and cinnamon does the trick quite handily. While I’m hardly anti-carb (hello constant bread baking), the main goal of cooking or baking anything, to me, is always about whoever’s going to be eating it. If I’ve made them happy, I’ve done my job. And I’m grateful and happy to say that this cake worked wonders for Joe’s mom’s birthday. How do I know? Not much was left at the end of the evening!
- As long as it isn’t mismarked and doesn’t have you using flour, that is. [↩]
Drive-by posting
It’s exceedingly bad form to post a teensy, tiny little thing without so much as a photo to go along with it, especially when I’ve got a lovely flourless chocolate cake cooling on a rack downstairs which should really be photographed and posted here. But patience, my darlings, will pay off, for it needs to mellow overnight before I even remove it from the springform pan! Unlike the springerle, I really will post photos in a timely fashion—later this weekend. I promise.
In the meantime, a new article of mine is now up at Chef’s Blade. Please read and enjoy!
Janaki
