JP Food: Sunken chocolate amaretto cake

From Tallaght, John Paul Kennedy is a self-taught cook with a passion for good old-fashioned home cooking.

I’ve mentioned before that I am an avid collector of cookbooks and watcher of cookery shows on Tv.

Recently I was watching a repeat episode from Nigella’s series ‘at my Table’ and she made this cake and I was reminded that I had the book and that I had never made it before.

While I like chocolate I am not a huge fan personally of large over indulgent chocolate cakes, this cake is more like a flourless chocolate torte cake, which I am big fan of!

Dark, majestic and squidgy the addition of amaretto biscuits to the cream provides both a smoothness and honeycomb crunch to the rich velvetiness of the cake!

Ingredients:

100g good quality dark chocolate (70% cocoa content)

100g soft unsalted butter

4 large eggs at room temperature

125g castor sugar

75g ground almonds

1 teaspoon of good vanilla extract

2 tablespoons of sieved cocoa powder

3 tablespoons of amaretto liquor (not essential if you don’t have / can’t source it)

Amaretti cream

250ml double cream

4 amaretto biscuits crumbled

Method:

1. Pre-heat your oven to 180c/160c fan and lightly grease the sides of a 20cm cake tin and line the base with baking parchment paper.
2. Put the chocolate and butter into a heatproof bowl and melt together over boiling water, making sure the bowl doesn’t touch the water.
3. Whisk the eggs and sugar until thick and glossy, and at least doubled in volume. Best to use a free standing mixer (quicker) if you have one or you can use a hand-held mixer instead.
4. Fork together the ground almonds and cocoa powder in a mixing bowl. Turn your mixer back on to low speed and add the almost, cocoa mixture to the egg mixture a spoonful at a time to ensure the mixture is evenly combined.
5. Add the amaretto liquor( if using) and vanilla extract to the slightly cooled melted chocolate mixture, then pour the glossary mixture into the cake batter, mixing all the time. Give a final fold by hand to make sure everything is smoothly combined.
6. Pour the cake batter into your prepared cake tin and bake for 25 minutes. The cake is cooked when it is slightly coming away from the edges of the cake tin. Don’t worry the top will have slightly cracked and sunk back a little – that’s perfectly okay!
7. Leave to cool completely covered with a clean tea towel. Once cool, remove from the cake tin, only remove from the base if you are brave enough to, I don’t. Sieve a teaspoon of cocoa powder all over the top of the cake, then whip up the double cream, add the crunched up amaretto biscuits, fold through and serve.

These types of recipes are my favourite to make.

Quick and easy to whip up, can feed many and are absolutely wickedly indulgent to eat after a delicious supper!