My favorite Cure for a Sugar Craving

Have you ever had one of those moments where you just need sugar? Well, I have. I have them a lot. One Saturday after a delicious dinner of salmon and sweet potatoes, I had one of these moments, and I decided to do something about it. My mom had just bought some fancy cookbook with food for athletes, and I found a recipe for Flourless Chocolate Cake. It looked so delicious, and I was also avoiding my homework, so my mom and I made it. It took a satisfying 60 minutes, but we had our cakes and knew all the secrets to making them, and I'm here to share those secrets.

Don't these look so delicious?

The recipe looks like this:

Ingredients-

• 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup liquor (our house was lacking liquor, so we used agave instead)
• 10 large eggs
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (sadly, we were out of that too, so we used almond extract- the cakes ended up tasting a bit like almonds)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• sprinkle of cayenne pepper (who would want cayenne pepper in their dessert? We used cinnamon instead)

The process of combining these ingredients is slightly confusing, and hard to do, but lucky my mom worked in a bakery and she showed me how. 

1. Heat oven to 325 degrees. Grease a 12-cup muffin tim or use cupcake liners in the tin.
2. Put water in bottom half of a double boiler or fill a small saucepan halfway with water. Bring to a gentle boil. - This is where it gets tricky. Let me explain it in more detail. Find a metal, or glass bowl and rest it on top of your sauce pan. Then fill up the saucepan with water, but make sure the water won't touch the bottom of the bowl - thats what keeps the chocolate and butter from burning. 
3. Into top of double boiler or metal bowl in sauce pan, add chocolate chips, butter, and liquor. When the chocolate and butter begin to melt, blend thoroughly. It should have an even, shiny finish. Remove from heat. - Try to keep stirring as it melts.
4. While the chocolate is melting, whip eggs in a separate bowl until frothy. Add sugar, vanilla, salt, and cayenne/cinnamon/other spice. - Beat the eggs until they're a lovely pale yellow
5. Ladle a bit of the egg mixture to the warm chocolate mixture and whisk quickly so that the eggs don't cook. Continue adding egg mixture and whisking until about one-third of it is incorporated into the chocolate mixture. Then pour the chocolate mixture back into the larger bowl containing the remaining eggs, and stir to combine. - Don't get lazy and skip the beginning of this step! If you don't do this right, you cake will loose all of it's fluffiness, which would be such a shame. Try having someone else ladle the egg in while you whisk.
6. Pour batter into muffin tin, filling each tim halfway. Bake 15-20 minutes. Cakes should be light and dry on the outside (with cracks on top) and dense and moist on the inside. - Yield! It took me 1 muffin tin, I mini muffin tin, and 7 ramequin bowls to use all of this batter. Feel free to cut the recipe in half.  

Recipe courtesy of The Feed Zone Cookbook

I couldn't get over how amazing these little cakes tasted! I loved the almond undertone, and it was amazing with cinnamon. These little cakes are amazing because they are on the low sugar side of deserts, and aren't really rich and chocolatey. They are a new favorite of mine! 

Fun Fact- According to the cookbook, these are also a favorite of Lance Armstrong.

~ Mia