This recipe is actually adapted from a lovely chocolate fondant recipe I learned at Nobu restaurant. Slightly tweaked, it becomes a wonderful wheat-free alternative with a great crumb and magnificent texture, something sorely lacking in most flourless cakes.
250 g/9 oz. Valrhona Araguani 72% Dark Chocolate, Scharffen Berger 70% or Green & Blacks Organic 70%, chopped into pea-sized pieces
250 g/2 sticks unsalted butter
5 eggs
2 egg yolks
100 g/½ cup caster/superfine sugar
30 g/3 tablespoons rice flour
30 g/3 tablespoons natural cocoa powder
20-cm/8-inch round cake pan, greased and baselined with parchment paper
serves 8–12
Preheat the oven to 170˚C (340˚F) Gas 5.
Put the chocolate in a large, heatproof bowl.
Melt the butter in a saucepan over high heat. Pour into the bowl of chocolate, stir until melted and smooth and set aside.
Using an electric mixer with whisk attachment (or an electric whisk), beat the eggs, egg yolks and sugar until pale and creamy in colour and quite thick – almost like a soft whipped cream.
Gently fold the egg mixture into the chocolate mixture.
Sift the rice flour and cocoa powder into the bowl and fold into the mixture.
Spoon the mixture into the prepared cake pan and bake in the preheated oven for 28–35 minutes. A wooden skewer inserted in the middle should come out with almost no crumbs attached, and the middle of the cake, when pressed, should spring back slightly instead of sink. Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Slide a table knife all around the edge to loosen the cake, then remove from the pan. Transfer to a wire rack to cool for 1 hour.