A Cooking Experiment

This afternoon our church had a little shower for those of us who are pregnant with not our first child. There are actually 6 of us in this situation, due from now until me in February, and at the shower we found out about another lady who is expecting her third child the end of May! We are on a real nursery growth explosion here. There is another woman who is expecting her first in December, and we've had 2 more new babies born over the summer.

Anyhow, the church had a "neccessities" shower for all of us, where we each got little things, like some diapers and a lullaby CD. Mainly we ate, talked, and prayed. It was so nice! I had volunteered to bring dessert. One of my friends, who is also pregnant, can't eat gluten during this pregnancy because it was giving her terrible skin problems. I wanted to make a dessert she could eat, so I decided to try a flourless chocolate cake. I had printed off a recipe someone had posted a long time ago on the old Well Trained Mind boards, but as I looked closer at it, it seemed a little intimidating. Also, even though it called for I think 7 eggs, you only baked it for 15 minutes! Then you just refrigerated it over night. With all these pregnant women, I didn't think that sounded all that good, so I googled. I found several possibilities, and I decided on this recipe from allrecipes.com, mainly because it seemed easy and I had all the ingredients on hand.

I made it last night, and this morning I dipped the pan in hot water and inverted in onto the serving plate, just like the recipe said. Then I got the bright idea to drizzle white chocolate on top, which would have been a good idea, except my chocolate never really melted all that well, so it was really thick and didn't "drizzle" very well. I should have just dusted it with powdered sugar--note to self. I still wasn't sure what it would taste like, however, and I had actually made a second dessert last night to take as well, in case the cake totally flopped.

Well. It was absolutely delicious. Everyone raved about it, and people thought it was store-bought. It was like a fudgy truffle. Yummmmm. And it was so easy to make, I thought I'd share the recipe right here, in case any of you are too lazy to click on the link.

Flourless Chocolate Cake I

Submitted by: Maggie
Rated: 5 out of 5 by 213 members
Yields: 16 servings
"A dense chocolate cake for those of us who can't tolerate wheat or gluten."

INGREDIENTS:
1/2 cup water
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup white sugar
18 (1 ounce) squares bittersweet chocolate (I used Baker's semi-sweet squares because that's what I had)
1 cup unsalted butter
6 eggs

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C). Grease one 10 inch round cake pan and set aside.

2. In a small saucepan over medium heat combine the water, salt and sugar. Stir until completely dissolved and set aside.

3. Either in the top half of a double boiler or in a microwave oven melt the bittersweet chocolate. Pour the chocolate into the bowl of an electric mixer.

4. Cut the butter into pieces and beat the butter into the chocolate, 1 piece at a time. Beat in the hot sugar-water. Slowly beat in the eggs, one at a time.

5. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Have a pan larger than the cake pan ready, put the cake pan in the larger pan and fill the pan with boiling water halfway up the sides of the cake pan.

6. Bake cake in the water bath at 300 degrees F for 45 minutes. The center will still look wet. Chill cake overnight in the pan. To unmold, dip the bottom of the cake pan in hot water for 10 seconds and invert onto a serving plate.