I made this cake after seeing it on the Channel 4 programme The Fabulous Baker Brothers presented by Tom and Henry, the recipe is here. It seemed a straight forward flourless chocolate cake, there are quite a few recipes out there including this one on my blog here. What intrigued me was the end result of the texture, it was very mousse-like and slightly under-baked appearance on the crumb, but this was baked directly in the oven without a bain-marie. The only thing holding this cake together are eggs and chocolate.
I followed the recipe apart from deciding to line the tin as an extra protection against the heat. I had to bake it a few minutes more because it was still liquid in the middle. I’m glad I lined the tin as the cake puffed up so much during baking it would’ve spilled over and on to the bottom of the oven, the paper held the cake in. Seeing the cake puff so much I was already beginning to have my doubts about it.
This cake had no trouble rising as you would expect from a cake with 10 yolks whisked with sugar until the ribbon stage, and then whisking 10 whites separately, essentially a soufflé. You know what they say, after a great rise there’s a great fall.
Within minutes of the cake cooling it collapsed on itself.
I left the cake until the next day to cut it and all my suspicions were right, the crumb of the cake fell apart into crumbly bits, nothing like the one on the Channel 4′s recipe photo.
I wondered if I had not baked it long enough as the middle was still so wet, but looking at the slice closely I can’t see how that would help as the outer layer of the cake was already dry, cooking it further would just dry out more of the cake in the same way, into a crunchy texture.
After tweeting the photo of it which led to some discussions of what could be missing in the recipe the likely cause seems baking in a bain-marie, allowing a slower temperature cook evenly without giving a crunchy thick skin to the cake.
This cake has the same ingredients as the very famous River Cafe Cookbook’s Chocolate Nemesis recipe, only in different proportion and they use an Italian meringue method for the whites, their cake is baked in bain-marie.
When I tasted it it was too bitter, I love dark chocolate but this was just overwhelming, I don’t think that amount of sugar is enough for 500g of very dark chocolate. I couldn’t bring myself to serve it to our friends coming over and whipped up some reliable chocolate brownies instead. A wast of 500g of chocolate and 10 eggs.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Such a shame! The cake on the show did look delicious.
What a sad tale. If you haven’t already binned it I’d be tempted to reuse it somehow by breaking it up into another mixture of some kind.
1. Contact the FBB via the C4 website and point them towards this blog asking for clarification about the recipe.
2. Have a butchers in their book which I believe is in all good bookshops to see if the recipe for in there matches up with the one you used.
3. Ask C4 for recompense for the eggs and chcolate as clearly the recipe they posted did not work!
What a shame! There’s nothing I hate more than a recipe involving such precious ingredients going wrong (and 10 eggs is a LOT of eggs). I’ve been loving the recipes on FBB TV show and ordered the book last week – makes me worry that maybe they haven’t been properly checked/edited? If you’re looking for a good flourless chocolate cake Ottolenghi’s first book has one which is lovely, or David Lebovitz’s Racine cake which always turns out perfectly for me.
Littleloaf, if you make it try the bain-marie method.
Tony – having tried in the past with other recipes, I feel the response would be the same as when I write in a complaint form to a big corporate.
I make a similar cake, and it’s foolproof. The one aspect of Baker’s recipe I noticed is that after the cake has cooled (in a spring-form pan) I put a plate on top of the pan and flip it so the cake is upside down and peel off the parchment. I let it sit overnight. My recipe has a lovely glaze of heavy cream, dark corn syrup and 256 grams semisweet or bitter chocolate.
Here is the recipe:
Butter a 9 inch spring form pan and line bottom with parchment. Butter parchment.
Wrap the pan in a layer of foil.
Ingredients:
340 grams bitter or semisweet chocolate
170 grams unsalted butter
6 large eggs separated
12 T. superfine sugar
2 t. vanilla
Melt chocolate and butter in a double pot and remove to a bowl to cool.
Beat egg yolks until pale, gradually beat in 3 T. sugar, add vanilla. Wash beaters.
Beat egg whites until soft peaks and add 3 T. sugar.
Fold 1/3 egg whites into chocolate mixture, and and slowly fold in rest.
Pour into springform pan and bake 50 minutes or until toothpick comes clean.
Cool thoroughly. Release spring on pan, cover with a large plate and flip the cake so the bottom is on top. Peel off parchment. By turning the cake upside down you don’t see the crusty ugly top and as the cake settles it becomes more dense. Chill before glazing.
Glaze: 1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 c dark corn syrup
255 grams chocolate
Bring cream and corn syrup to a boil and simmer a minute; remove from heat and add broken chocolate bits until melted. Spread 1/2 cup glaze on sides of cake and pour remainder over top, smoothing out. Chill at least one hour or overnight.
Cheers, Milaena
Thanks for sharing the recipe Milaena, a good idea of yours with the plate.
Hey there. I did actually make the cake this morning and it turned out just fine. It surely didn’t look as pretty as the picture from the show (I bet it’s because they used a wood fire and must have really smoothed out the top).
However, I did bake it with a bain-marie and made sure the oven was moist. I also baked it for a little bit longer but at 160C instead of 180C as described in the recipe. The middle did not rise as much, and as such it didn’t collapse at the end. Did you really whisk the whites until they had stiff peaks? I know I over whisked just so that there would be enough air in there.
Try it again – it was well worth the smiles at the office today when people tried the cake. Good luck!
Tim – Good to hear you took the conventional route with this type of cake and used the bain marie method.
I made this cake today with my daughter. Exactly the same happened. Your pictures could be my cake. I was suspicious when I poured the batter into the cake tin as it almost filled it, but as the recipe says cook until ‘set’ I went with it. It rose up amazingly but with no paper in the tin it did overflow. I cooked it at 160 fan for a bit longer but I kept having to leave it in for longer and longer as it was still liquid. In the end I took it out as I too realised it was just drying out like a biscuit. It is more like a souffle or a chocolate merengue. Definitely not a cake. Very disappointed.