DC Vegetarian Cooking Group

Will's Chipotle Chocolate Cake
Adapted from Simply Recipes & Martha Stewart

Jack Zahora

Ingredients

Flourless Chocolate Cake:
7 tsp unsalted butter
10 oz baker's chocolate
5 eggs
1 cup sugar
2.5 tbsp Chipotle powder
2 tbsp Adobo Sauce
1.5 pinches salt
Spicy Blackberry Sauce:
6 6oz packages of blackberries
3 tbsp Sriracha sauce
1/2 tbsp habanero sauce
4-6 tbsp sugar

Helpful Items
9" Springform baking pan
Double boiler
Egg beater with whisk attachment

Directions

Flourless Chocolate Cake:

    1) Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Don't forget this step; I've discovered that bumping it up to 450 to compensate doesn't work.

    2) In a double boiler, melt together the chocolate and the butter. The smaller the pieces are, the easier this will be. If you don't have a double boiler a) get one, because melted chocolate exerts more social influence than melted gold, or b) for now, just MacGyver it by placing a glass bowl as a lid over a pot of boiling water-- but make sure the bowl does not touch the water.

    3) Remove the chocolate from the boiler and let it cool. In a clean non-plastic bowl, whisk the eggs to soft peaks, or about three times their original volume. Martha says you can get a fluffier texture by throwing the yolks in with the chocolate mixture and whisking the whites only. A whisk attachment for the egg beater makes this trivial, but even the standard beaters will get things going. Unless you're a masochist, don't try and whip these by hand. We invented electricity for a reason. I can only assume this was it.

   4) Once the eggs are whipped, add about 1/4 of the eggs into the mostly-cooled chocolate. If the chocolate is too hot you'll get an awesome bubble-wrap noise, and the cake will be very dense. Next, pour the chocolate-egg mixture slowly into the remaining eggs and fold them together. Any excessive violence will deflate the cake.

   5) Add the chipotle powder and adobo sauce to taste, along with a pinch of salt. This step exists mainly to give you ample excuse to taste the batter. It turns out that small amounts of salt accentuate the other flavors in the dish and are a must for baking.

   6) Pour the combined mixture in to a 9 inch (or so) baking pan, and place it on the center rack of the oven. When a toothpick/knife in the center of the cake comes out clean, it's finished. This will probably take 40 minutes.

   7) Let the cake cool for about 10 minutes while you put together the sauce.

Editor's Note: It's worth noting that I'm not the best baker. In fact I'm probably the worst kind-- improvisational and inexperienced-- but you can trust that even if this recipe goes horribly awry it will still leave you with a delicious hunk of melty chocolate. Wiser bakers will probably point out much better ratios for the ingredients.

Spicy Blackberry Sauce:
8) In a large bowl, crush the blackberries with the back of a spoon, trying to extract as much juice as possible.

9) Using a small strainer, one lump at a time, filter the juice into another bowl and set aside the seeds- they make a good garnish, and probably a great cobbler, as well.

10) Using the double boiler or a sauce pan, add a half tablespoon of sugar and heat the blackberry juice until it's reduced by about half.

11) Remove the sauce from heat and add in the Sriracha, habanero sauce, and sugar. If you're open to experimenting, the idea is to add Sriracha until it burns, then habanerosauce until it's unbearable, and finally enough sugar to make you want to repeat the experience.

12) Drizzle or spread over cake, and serve.

Editor's Note: This was made almost entirely through trial-and-error. To spare my dignity, I'm going to omit the repeated use of the phrase "buy more blackberries and start over." Since this process is, like anything poorly understood, as much ritual as science, I'm recording how I did everything. Improvements likely abound.