Flourless Chocolate Cake with Strawberry Sauce

The proportions for this are a little specific because we used four 3.5" ramekins. If you have that, go ahead, otherwise you're going to have to adjust things. If you want to make one big 8" chocolate cake, you multiply everything by 21/16. Yeah. Math.

Ingredients

• Cake
  
  
  
  • 2 eggs, beaten
    
  • 1 c plus 1.5 tbsp granulated sugar
    
  • 3oz chocolate chips
    
  • 6.5 tbsp dutch process cocoa (5 normal plus 1 heaping tbsp is fine)
    
  • 4/5 a stick of unsalted butter (a little more than 6 tbsp)
    
  
  
• Strawberry Sauce
  
  
  
  • 1/4 lb strawberries, washed, stems cut off, and halved
    
  • 1-2tbsp granulated sugar
    
  • 1/2tsp lemon juice
    
  
  

For the cake, preheat oven to 375. Put some water to simmer on the stove, and melt the butter along with the chocolate chips into a metal bowl in the simmering water. (The idea is to make a sort of double boiler. If you actually have a double boiler, go for it.) Take the bowl out and whisk in the sugar. Now (careful that the chocolate is not too hot) whisk in the eggs. Finally, whisk in the cocoa one tbsp at a time.

Line the bottoms of four 3.5in ramekins with a round of wax paper. Spray each liberally with PAM. Distribute the batter evenly between the four ramekins. Place ramekins evenly on a baking sheet with about 1c water in it. Bake for about 25-30 minutes, until the top of the cakes has a bit of a crust. It could take shorter or longer, depending. I had a pizza stone in my oven that I forgot to take out before I baked these. They came out fine, but it probably messed with the temperature.

For the strawberry sauce, throw the strawberries into a sauce pan with the sugar and lemon juice. Better to have less sugar and then add it as needed, I think. Turn it on high and stir until the sugar dissolves, then turn it down to medium and cover for three minutes. Uncover, adjust sugar and lemon juice. Le voila.

To serve (at least the way we did) put a little puddle of strawberry sauce in the center of a plate. Flip a ramekin over on it and then, lifting the plate and the ramekin at the same time, slam each back onto the counter (not TOO hard) so that the cake dislodges. Take the piece of waxed paper off the top, and top with more strawberry sauce and fresh raspberries.

Thoughts: This was a first experiment, and I think we all felt it was an unqualified success. It was amazing. Really good. Seriously. Only difference is, next time I do it I'm going to let them cook just a little longer. I took them out JUST when the crust formed on top so they wouldn't be too dry, and it worked - they were very nice. But they could use to bake up just a little firmer. All the same, this was delicious and surprisingly easy. As an aside, it would be clever to use a pyrex liquid measuring cup (or something heatproof with a lip) instead of a metal bowl in the double boiler because pouring the batter would be easier. That was the hardest part of this dish.

Disaster Index: 1/10