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Gluten-free chocolate mud cake
- Serves
8
- Difficulty
Medium
By Tonia George
Published 2014
When we first opened our café in Hampstead, baking cakes in our minuscule kitchen was impossible, so we found a wonderful local pastry chef, Alison, to bake them for us. When she moved on to open her own place, we begged her to share a few of her recipes with us in case there was a riot, and luckily she agreed. We are proud to present her wonderful ‘mud’ cake, which has a soft, mousse-like centre.
Ingredients
Method
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Excellent recipe , I needed a larger cake to serve twelve , and the cake works very well , even if you increase the quantity’s by a half , a sign of a good recipe .I have been making another flourless mousse cake for years , but this one , with the addition of Cassava flour , I’m in Fiji , is now my favourite. Only one suggestion , whip the egg whites at the end of the preparation, not the beginning, as recipe states , as the egg white may separate….thank you for sharing …
Hi Robert - thanks for sharing - great to hear that this worked well for you, and for the tip re: cassava flour. I had my honeymoon in Fiji 25 years ago this month!
This did not turn out well for me, unlike similar recipes I have tried. Hi Matthew, in response to your question, the cake did not rise at all and therefore failed to deflate to produce the crackled top and the middle didn’t really set and wasn’t mousse-like. The texture didn’t look right after introducing the cooled chocolate mixture to the doubled egg yolks and sugar. I checked the melted chocolate and butter temp as I always do by touching the bottom of the metal bowl. It lightened a little after introducing the egg whites, but still looked much heavier than similar cakes I have cooked (Richard Sax's cloud cake, for example). I cooked for 35 min in an oven with an extra temp gauge and a skewer test had remnants which I expected for a “mousse-like centre”. I workshopped it with my mum last night. My unknown variables were a butter brand I hadn’t used before and using large size eggs rather than the extra large I usually use, although the recipe doesn’t stipulate. However, just reading through the recipe again now, I think there may be a printed oven temp error. I set my oven to 160 gas, as written, but I note that the fan temp is 180. Isn’t it usually the other way around, with fan temp lower than gas? An incorrect temp would have been a contributing factor, but my batter texture still did not look right.
Sorry to hear it wasn’t a success for you. What was the problem exactly?
Update:
Hi Mel- thanks for the additional details!
I had a not dissimilar experience making a Black Forest Gateau sponge recipe which used a similar approach of creaming eggs and sugar and then mixing in flour and folding in egg whites, with no other leavening agent. I have a feeling that there is a special knack to making this approach work to deliver a light cake and I’m hoping to learn what it is … Richard Sax’s Chocolate Cloud Cake is more like a mousse in how you make it, folding egg whites gently into a chocolate batter, and for me too, that worked nicely first time. But I’ve not given up on the other approach :-)
On the temperature front, I think the format in this book may not have been clear, but there are three settings listed, separated by /
180°C ('conventional' electric oven) 160°C (fan electric oven) Gas Mark 4 (gas oven)So yes, it sounds like the temperature of 160 that you used should actually have been 180.