Sachertorte is my favourite chocolate cake, but since it’s based on flour, you can’t serve it at Passover. You can, however, serve this flourless chocolate almond cake, whose recipe was passed down to us by my late mother-in-law and is a firm family favourite (Joan was much loved, by the way – very much the opposite of the Les Dawson stereotype).

• 3 eggs
• 100g dark chocolate (as usual, my favourite is 70% Chocolat Menier)
• 100g sugar
• 100g ground almonds
• 100g butter, plus some for greasing
• 15ml (1tbsp) brandy or rum, optional
• A small cup of espresso coffee (I made 60ml or so). An alternative would be a teaspoon of instant coffee dissolved in 30ml or so of water

1. Preheat oven to 135℃ fan
2. Line the base of a 23cm (or so) cake tin with baking paper, grease the sides with butter
3. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. If the butter is hard, chop it into small pieces.
4. Add the butter and mix until melted
5. Reserve 25g of the sugar in a small bowl
6. Add the remaining 75g of sugar, ground almonds, coffee and brandy to the chocolate mixture and stir until smooth
7. Remove the top of the double boiler from the heat. If you’re feeling impatient, cool it in an ice bath. Otherwise, just wait for it to be not too much above room temperature: you don’t want it scrambling the egg yolks.
8. Separate the eggs into two bowls
9. Whisk the whites until soft, add the 25g of sugar, and whisk until you have a stiff meringue
10. Whisk the yolks until foamy, then add the chocolate mixture and stir
11. Fold in the meringue until you’ve got rid of any blobs of egg white and any swirls of dark chocolate.
12. Pour into your cake tin and bake. Everyone’s oven is different: I gave the cake around 40 minutes, opened to check it with a skewer, and then gave it another 10 when the skewer didn’t come out quite dry.
13. Cool on a rack for as long as you can bear it.
14. Serve (with whipped cream, if you’re feeling Viennese).

• Food
• Uncategorized