Chocolate Almond Cake

Simple and Good

Tools:

banana for scale

• Baking mold: Personally, I prefer a 20cm spring form. Any other mold works, though. Ideally, the surface-area should be equivalent or slightly bigger. For example, a 25x18cm² rectangular form would do just fine, but yields a thinner cake.
  The cake is very forgiving, though, so a bigger or smaller mold would work.
• Scale: I generally use a scale, but if you are comfortable with other measurement tools (like cups, …), just use those. You don’t need to be super precise.
• Mixer: You can also just mix things by hand, but a mixer makes things much faster.
• Bowl: not much to say here.
• Grinder / Blender: If you can’t get grated almonds (or even almond flour), you will need to grate the almonds yourself. A grinder or blender might work for that. Be careful: almonds have a tendency to wedge themselves between the blades and the container. I have had coffee grinders that could not deal with almonds.

Ingredients:

• 150g grated almonds
• 150g unsalted butter
• 150g sugar
• 4 eggs
• 10g vanilla sugar
• 100g cooking chocolate
• 50g flour
• 5g baking powder (or what your powder recommends)

Preparation:

Mix the baking powder into the flour. At least you won’t forget later.

Make sure the baking mold doesn’t stick. I simply butter the mold, but a non-stick spray probably works just as fine.

Get your butter and chocolate soft. There are multiple ways to do this. Pick the one that you are most comfortable with.

• Water bath
• Microwave (with the danger of overheating the chocolate)
• Oven at 60°C
• Pan on low temperature

If I have the time I use the oven, otherwise the microwave.

Grate your almonds.

Grated Almonds

Mix the soft butter and the sugar. Don’t forget the vanilla sugar.

Slowly add the eggs one by one. You should end up with a creamy consistency (but don’t worry too much).

Add the almonds, chocolate and flour.

Pour the dough into the mold. Feel free to taste the mixture. It should be delicious.

Bake at 160°C for at least 30 minutes (usually more than 40). Prefer to cook at lower temperatures and to check regularly if the cake is done. This is the one step, where you really need to pay attention: don’t burn the cake.

not done (left). almost (middle). done (right)

There are multiple ways to check whether the cake is done. I usually just stick a knife into the cake and see if comes out clean. If yes, then the cake is done. Professionals often just shake the mold a bit and see if the dough wobbles too much.

Advice from personal experience:

• Don’t use salt instead of sugar. You should notice this when tasting the mixture (just before pouring the dough into the mold). In this case, “delicious” isn’t exactly what comes to mind.
• Don’t try to remove the attachment of the hand mixer, while it’s still plugged in. More importantly, don’t accidentally turn on the mixer while doing this. It hurts, and leaves a huge mess in the kitchen.
• Don’t mix up units and use 500g flour (instead of 50g). Surprisingly, the result is still edible, though a bit on the heavy side.

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