Flourless Chocolate and Caramel Cake

This week I had a surprise challenge! Making a flourless cake. To be honest it was not my plan, but I wanted to try to make a gluten free cake and a tasty one! To please a larger crowd and get to expend my knowledge on gluten-free stuff, without using starchs.

So just so you know a flourless cake like the one below will never, NEVER be as high as a regular cake! It will be pretty flat: If you want a less crumbly and thicker result you will need to add to that recipe 1 full cup of almond flour and 2 tbsp of baking powder. Of course i love challenges so I decided to not do that ! :)

I took a traditional recipe, very gooey and fudgy and work with it.

You can bake all at once the below cake recipe, or part it in two if you want two layers! They will be thin, keep that in mind.

When a flourless cake bake, it will raise and fall. And some pieces will stuck to the sides, but the meringue style top will be down, leaving the cake irregular. The trick about that cake is that, once I get it out the oven, I foiled the crumbs and pieces from the cake stuck to the side, so i kinda level the cake already so it is a better shape. Leaving it out for 20 mins, then in the fridge for 1 hour.

So here we go:

Ingredients:

Flourless cake:

6 eggs

180g butter

350g chocolate

1 cup of sugar

8 inch cake form

Dulce de leche frosting:

200g cream cheese at room temprature

200gr butter at room temperature

2 cup of snow sugar

1 can Dulce de leche

Oven pre-heated at 170 degrees clsius

For the cake, work in rubbon the eggs and sugar for 10 minutes at least. While you do that, you can put in a bowl the chocolate and butter on top. Warm it up in the microwave mid-high power for 20 seconds first, take out and mix. Then again 20 seconds, take out and mix. The butter shall be warm enough to melt the rest of the chocolate pieces. Take your time and do not overheat! Let it to the side for 5 minutes. Once the eggs are ready, take some rubbon eggs to mix in the chocolate and temper it. Then little by little mix both together carefully.

Use a 8 inch or smaller spring form, use parchement for the bottom at least, but sides also if you can. Otherwise use some butter for the sides.

Put it in the oven for 1h

For the frosting, you can make your own dulce de leche or buy a good quality one like I did :P

In your mixer use a whisk and put the room temparature butter and frosting together, mix till combine and add the snow sugar. Mix for 1 minute and add then the dulce de leche mix for 2 minutes or till it gets very fluffy!

Once your cake is cooled, you take it out of the form and transfer to another one so you can layer your frosting. In my case I parted the mix in 2 cakes. I layered both carefully with the frosting in a form. Be delicate to not have crumbs everywhere, the frosting shall have like 1 cm thickness so you do not meet the cake with your spatula. Once done. Put it one or 2 hour in the freezer.

Take it out of the form and do the decoration of your choice! I put on top a layer of small meringues and put some cacao powder. For the sides, frosting can be used, but I made on the side chocolate pieces which have the shape of brush strokes and give a more classy look to the cake.

I have to be honest this recipe was a bit of hard work and heart attack putting it together. I was not sure it would be good, but it turns out great!

The frosting has a tangy caramel, salty flavour, the cake is super fudgy. I  advise to leave it overnight in the fridge it will get the cake softer and stuck proprely to the frosting layers.

Enjoy!