Now…this is not for those watching the waist line, however, it is one of those cakes that is great for special occasions and definitely one of my Justin’s favourites….

Ingredients.

• 250g of unsalted butter
• 100g of ground almonds (Almond meal), or for an even nuttier flavour, use 50g of ground almonds and 50g of ground hazelnuts.
• 6 large eggs
• 50g of light brown sugar (or muscovado)
• 125g of caster sugar (A little baking secret for rich flavour is to store your white sugar in a jar with a vanilla bean cut in half…it scents the sugar beautifully and is wonderful to use in baking)
• 200g of dark chocolate (Now…not all chocolates are created equal…you want a dark, bitter chocolate with about 70% cocoa solids or higher. This is for two reasons. The first is that using milk chocolate would be sickly sweet because it already contains sugar. Secondly, dark chocolate is high in antioxidants and is beneficial for cardiovascular health)

Equipment

• 20-25cm cake tin, lined with grease-proof paper and greased lightly with olive oil spray or melted unsalted butter. Alternatively, you can always use a non-stick baking tray.
• Whisk, spatula or Mixmaster.

Method.

1. Pre-heat oven to 160 degrees Celsius
2. Melt the chocolate and unsalted butter in a bain-marie (double boiler). For those of you that don’t know what this is, it is simply putting a heatproof bowl suspended over a pot of gently boiling water. Chefs use this method to gently melt substances, especially chocolate, as you do not want it to burn.
3. Add half of the caster sugar and all of the brown sugar into the chocolate once it has melted.
4. Fold in the almonds into the chocolate, mixing well.
5. In a separate bowl or in a Mixmaster, add the remaining caster sugar and eggs. Beat them until they have increased at least twice in volume.
6. When the chocolate mix has cooled slightly, fold the beaten eggs into the chocolate, stirring well…you will notice that it will start to thicken slightly.
7. Pour the batter into the tin, and bake at 160 degrees Celsius for around 20-25 minutes.
8. Let the cake cool and then unmold it. It is lovely by itself (and very rich) or you can put an icing on top if you so desire. It is lovely with freshly whipped cream and a glass of Bailey’s 🙂