Chocolate Cloud Cake
Submitted by brianjwood on March 10, 2007 at 12:10 pm

DESCRIPTION
Chocolate Cloud Cake

SUMMARY
Yield 0 File under cakes

INSTRUCTIONS
Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas 4.
2. Line the bottom of a 23cm Springform cake tin with baking parchment.
3. Melt the chocolate either in a double boiler or a microwave, and then let
the butter melt in the warm chocolate.
4. Beat the 2 whole eggs and 4 egg yolks with 75g caster sugar, then gently
add the chocolate mixture, the Cointreau and orange zest.
5. In another bowl, whisk the 4 egg whites until foamy, then gradually add
the 100g of sugar and whisk until the whites are holding their shape but not
too stiff.
6. Lighten the chocolate mixture with a dollop of egg whites, and then fold
in the rest of the whites.
7. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for about 35-40 minutes or until the
cake is risen and cracked and the centre is no longer wobbly. Cool the cake
in it’s tin on a wire rack; the middle will sink as it cools.
8. When you are ready to eat, place the still tin-bound cake on a cake stand
or plate for serving and carefully remove the cake from its tin. Don’t worry
about cracks or rough edges: it’s the crater look we’re going for here.
9. Whip the cream until soft and then add the vanilla and Cointreau and
continue whisking until the cream is firm but not stiff.
10. Fill the crater of the cake with the whipped cream, easing it out gently
towards the edges of the cake, and dust the top lightly with cocoa powder
pushed through a tea-strainer.

Cooks note: On days when I want the warmth of the hearth rather than the
hurly burly of the city streets I stay in and read cookery books, and this
recipe comes from just the sort of book that gives most succour, Classic
Home Desserts by Richard Sax. The cake itself (which was the pudding I made
for last New Year’s Eve dinner) is as richly, rewardingly sustaining: a
melting, dark flourless chocolate base, the sort that sinks damply on
cooling; the fallen centre is then cloudily filled with softly whipped cream
and sprinkled with cocoa powder. As Richard Sax says ‘intensity, then
relief, in each bite’.

You can make this into an Easter Nest Cake by folding 200g/7oz melted chocolate into the cream topping and dotting with the sugar-coated eggs instead of the cocoa. Leave the Cointreau out of both the cake and the cream.

Ingredients

250g/9oz dark chocolate, minimum 70% cocoa solids
125g/41/2oz unsalted butter, softened
6 eggs, :2 whole, 4 separated
175g/61/2oz caster sugar
2 tbsp Cointreau, (optional)
1 orange, grated zest only (optional)

For the cream topping

500ml/17 USfl.oz double cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp Cointreau, (optional)
0.5 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder, for sprinkling

Chocolate Cloud Cake

By Nigella Lawson

From Nigella Bites

Richly dark chocolate cake contrasts a lightly whipped cream topping in this
decadent creation, made by Nigella Lawson

Servings: 8-12
Level of difficulty: Easy
Preparation Time: 20 minutes
Cooking Time: 40 minutes