La Noire 3

[Mina Meiss]

Subscribeto my newsletter to get posts, recipes, Paris tips, and more sent right to your Inbox! Free subscribers get some posts and paid subscribers get all posts as well as the ability to participate in the community of commenters.

Preheat the oven to 350F (180C). Butter the bottom and sides of a 9-inch (23cm) cake pan. (I used a glass-bottom springform pan, which makes serving the cake easier, but you can use a regular springform pan or a standard cake pan.) If using a springform pan, wrap the outside of the cake pan, across the bottom and up the sides, with a sheet of aluminum foil to prevent water from getting in. If using a standard cake pan, line the bottom with a circle of parchment paper.

Turn off the heat and stir in the chopped chocolates, mixing until smooth. Add a pinch of salt and then mix in the butter, stirring until smooth. If the mixture needs it, feel free to give it a few brisk stirs with a whisk to smooth it out.

Put the eggs and the remaining 1/3 cup of sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and whip at high speed until the mixture has tripled in volume and is thick, 10 to 15 minutes.

Scrape the batter into the prepared cake pan. Fill the roasting pan with very hot water so it reaches halfway up the outside of the cake pan. Bake the cake for 25-35 minutes, until a sharp paring knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Mine baked for 30 minutes, but start checking it at the 25-minute mark.

Remove the cake from the oven, and from the water bath, and let cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Carefully run a sharp knife around the outside of the cake to loosen it from the pan, then remove the sides of the springform pan.

-This is a very soft cake. The best way to cut the cake is to dip a sharp knife in very hot water, wipe the blade clean, and make the first cut. Repeat the process, dipping the knife in hot water and wiping the blade clean between each subsequent slice. Conversely, you can heat the blade of the knife with the flame of the blowtorch or gas stove before slicing, wiping it clean, and rewarming it with the flame between each slice.

I was fairly confident in the recipe, which was from cookbook author Lora Brody. I\u2019ve read a few different stories about how she came up with the cake, but the one I like is that she\u2019d had a cake like this in France and it became her b\u00EAte noire (which means, something that bothers you, or that you are obsessed with\u2026according to Romain) as she tinkered with figuring out how to make it.

I met Lora many years ago at a culinary conference, before the internet, when people networked face-to-face, and I went to a seminar she gave. She was a great speaker and wrote cookbooks at a time when cookbooks were problem-solvers (such as The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook, which gave you a whole bunch of other things you could cook in your rice cooker), before people were sharing recipes for charred fermented cabbage with gochujang beurre blanc and hawaij-cardamom crisp or pickled cranberry, halloumi, and curry ice cream. Many were focused on helping harried people get a meal on the table, such as Peg Bracken\u2019s I Hate to Cook Book, Poppy Cannon\u2019s The Can-Opener Cookbook, and Help! My Apartment Has a Kitchen Cookbook.

This cake is very chocolaty, thanks to the addition of unsweetened chocolate. French people don\u2019t bake with unsweetened chocolate, which I learned was an American thing from when I went to chocolate school in Belgium and the other students (from outside the U.S.) were confused when I told them that we baked with it.

It used to be very hard to find unsweetened chocolate in France, where it\u2019s not called chocolate, but 100% p\u00E2te de cacao (cocoa paste). But I now see it in natural food stores, and I buy it at G. Detou. If you live elsewhere, Lindt sells a 99% chocolate bar, which is close enough.

The general consensus is that few people want to weigh eggs, which I get. We don\u2019t get extra-large eggs in France so I took a look at the BBC egg conversion chart, which said 5 extra-large eggs equals 6 large eggs. If you have a scale, your egg weight (including the shells) should be around 360 grams. That\u2019s 6 large eggs.

Whatever quirks and issues the United States has, it\u2019s definitely winning at aluminum foil. There\u2019s heavy-duty foil, extra-wide foil, extra-thick foil, non-stick foil, pitmaster\u2019s foil, single-cut foil sheets, and recycled foil. A French friend used to beg me to bring back rolls of foil for her. Thankfully, I\u2019m the king of reusing things, so every scrap or sheet of foil gets reused until it\u2019s kaput.

Another cultural difference, which I\u2019ve probably mentioned before, is that in France, home bakers (and professional bakers) don\u2019t automatically add vanilla to desserts. (Also in France, there\u2019s no word or term for \u201Chome bakers.\u201D) If one does add vanilla, vanilla will be added to the name of the dessert. People here have pretty acute palates, and if I do put a few drops of vanilla in something, people will invariably taste it and say, \u201COh, you added vanilla to this\u2026\u201D even though I\u2019ve literally added 1/16th of a teaspoon to the batter of a rich chocolate cake. Somehow, they can taste it. I\u2019m impressed.

Another secret extract that I sometimes sneak into desserts is chocolate extract. I never call for it in recipes because it\u2019s something that\u2019s not easy to find. Twenty or so years ago, when my first cookbook came out, someone who went to the same university as me wrote that his family company had been making chocolate extract for years. Their primary market was the food service industry since he told me that when chocolate is processed, it loses some \u201Ctop notes\u201D of flavor. Some manufacturers use chocolate extract to add them back.

Since then, I think they\u2019ve stopped selling to the public, although Nielsen-Massey makes it. (Fortunately, I have a lifetime supply of it, as well as a lifetime supply of American aluminum foil.) Some people also add a teaspoon of instant coffee or espresso powder to chocolate batters, which you could do as well here.

Lastly, in case you\u2019re wondering, when I brought this cake to the party (yes, I took a slice out, partially, to show you the inside\u2026then I put it back, covering my tracks with powdered sugar), it was a huge hit. It was a little tricky slicing it into twenty pieces, but one woman scraped up all the chocolate scraps left on the platter and wrapped them up to bring home with her. I was impressed! And so was she.

I saw somewhere that someone made this cake using all bittersweet chocolate, replacing the unsweetened chocolate with bittersweet chocolate. So if you can\u2019t find unsweetened chocolate, you could give that a go. But for a true bittersweet experience, I\u2019d go with unsweetened chocolate.

Preheat the oven to 350\u00BAF (180\u00BAC). Butter the bottom and sides of a 9-inch (23cm) cake pan. (I used a glass-bottom springform pan, which makes serving the cake easier, but you can use a regular springform pan or a standard cake pan.) If using a springform pan, wrap the outside of the cake pan, across the bottom and up the sides, with a sheet of aluminum foil to prevent water from getting in. If using a standard cake pan, line the bottom with a circle of parchment paper.

Put 1 cup of sugar and the water in a medium saucepan. If using a glass thermometer, clip it to the pan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and cook until the temperature is 220\u00BAF (104\u00BAC). (I cooked mine to 225\u00BAF/107\u00BAC, and it was fine. If you do cook it too much over that, add a little water, which will lower the temperature, then heat it back up to the right temperature.) If you don\u2019t have a thermometer, boil the syrup for about 3-4 minutes, until it\u2019s the consistency of warm maple syrup.

Remove the bowl from the mixer and gradually fold in the melted chocolate, reaching down to the bottom of the bowl to make sure everything is getting incorporated. (In the original recipe, the chocolate is added to the eggs with the mixer on low speed, which you\u2019re welcome to do, but I like to finish batters like this by hand.)

If you\u2019ve baked the cake in a standard cake pan, let the cake cool completely (although the original recipe said you should do this while the cake is still warm, after the 10-minute cooling period, I would wait until the cake has mostly cooled and \u201Cset\u201D), then set a baking sheet over the cake. Simultaneously turn over the cake in the pan and the baking sheet. Lift off the cake pan and peel off the parchment paper. Place a serving platter, serving side down, over the cake then turn both over at the same time. Remove the baking sheet.

3a8082e126