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happy (gluten free) birthday!

It's my sister's birthday next week so she invited a gang of her friends over for a little birthday do. Obviously birthday cake is a must, even if you're allergic to gluten! I knocked her up a chocolate cake (with ground almonds rather than flour) with a little help from her friends. It is everso moist...and even more delicious with a good scoop of vanilla ice cream.

We shared a square tray between 10 of us, but if you're not greedy it will happily go between more people in slightly smaller portions!

You will need:
125g melted salted butter
125g caster sugar
4 eggs (separated into yolks and whites)
200g dark chocolate (nice high percentage cocoa content as there are so few ingredients you want to make sure the chocolate is good!)
200g ground almonds

Pre-heat your oven to 170°C and grease your baking tray. I used a square silicon one so didn't need to line it, but if you use a metal one you'll need to pop some greaseproof paper in. 

Melt the butter and stir it into the sugar. Separate your eggs into two bowls and slop the yolks into your sugar and butter mixture and stir it all together to combine.


Break up the chocolate into chunks and melt it into a nice gloop before pouring it into the sugar/egg/butter mix. 


If you melt your chocolate in a microwave (as I did) make sure you keep the microwave nice and low, stir it often and keep checking on it as chocolate has a tendency to granulate if you don't keep an eye on it!


Add the ground almonds to the sugar/butter/egg yolk bowl and stir the chocolate in. Whizz the egg whites until they're really pale, light and airy. It takes about a minute using an electric whisk and much longer if you do it by hand. Fold the whisked egg whites in two batches into the other mixture. Do this really gently as you want to keep the air in so that the cake is light and delicious!


Pour the chocolate goodness into the prepared tray and put on the middle shelf of the oven for 20 minutes. You'll know it's ready to come out of the oven when it doesn't wobble when you pull the tray out (yes, this is very technical). The skewer test doesn't really work on this cake as it's so moist. 


Allow the cake to cool before cutting into slices, dolloping on the ice cream and digging it. It's delicious even if you don't have coeliac disease!

My sister's housemate, Chloe, also knocked up this magnificent gluten-free carrot cake. It is absolutely gorgeous! What a star!





Comments

  1. Surrysis8 August 2013 at 13:50

    Def takes longer than 20 mins!! But sooooo good :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Caggy P8 August 2013 at 17:40

      Sorry about that Surrysis! Maybe my oven is a bit more powerful? Who knows! Glad you enjoyed them despite them taking a bit longer to cook! xxx

      Delete

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