Comments on: lighter-than-air chocolate cake

By: LincolnSquareMom

LincolnSquareMom — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:35:32 +0000

Made this cake 2 weeks ago. It was first attempt at cake from scratch! It took me 3 hours to make, but was worth it! My husband couldn’t believe I made it. I used the roll – didn’t break, just followed Deb’s recipe to the letter, except that I couldn’t find Dutch process cocoa powder, used what cocoa powder I had on hand and didn’t have Grand Marnier so I used 2 tbsp of cocoa and 1 tsp of vanilla – it was amazing – chocolate cake with chocolate filling. I can’t wait to try different combos. Even my 3 1/2 yr old loved this cake and he is not a chocolate person!

By: katie

katie — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:20:10 +0000

I made this for valentine’s day yesterday and it was a disaster! I wanted to just make a 2 layer cake because 4 looks so huge for just 3 of us so I used the cake roll amounts and baked in 2 9in pans. First try: melted chocolate while beating yolks with sugar (this only took me about 5 minutes with hand mixer and they were SUPER pale and thick). while chocolate cooled a bit I beat whites, room temp, and then folded the chocolate into the yolks. Whites were beating and 15 minutes later I just decided they would NOT reach stiff peaks at all. So I threw them out and started with cold whites, this whipped up quickly and nicely. Meanwhile, my chocolate yolks turned into a super thick, pasty hard lump. So threw THAT out. Huge waste :( Once everything was mixed and in the pans it looked like your pics so i was pleased and at 15 minutes the layers were really puffy and dry to the touch- YAY! they cooled on racks pretty quickly and sank down to thin layers and i popped them in the freezer. I made whipped cream using Baileys instead of grand marnier and and hour later assembled but was worried because the cake seemed less than light. It was. Very strange. Dh said it had no flavor even though I used organic 72% dark chocolate for the chocolate and good quality everything! I don’t know what went wrong but this will not be made again lol. I should have made the chocolate peanut butter cake- which I am definitely making soon because it looks way too good.

By: Mrs Ergül

Mrs Ergül — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 06:14:15 +0000

Hi Krystal, thanks for all that tips and insights!

By: deb

deb — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:13:38 +0000

In the recipe notes, I mention that this cake sinks in the middle. It is the nature of the cake; you did not do anything wrong.

By: Jaime

Jaime — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:36:48 +0000

Mine was puffed and dry to the touch, but then sank in the middle. Any idea what I did wrong?

By: Laurie

Laurie — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:39:28 +0000

Deb, I was thinking about making this cake for Thanksgiving, but I’m hoping to do some of it ahead of time. Do you think it would be ok to make the cake layers the weekend before Thanksgiving and then fill the whip cream filling the day of?

By: Krystal

Krystal — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:00:57 +0000

I made this cake and it was my first attempt at making a cake that was flourless, used no milk and was 4 layers in size filled with cream. Coincidently it was my first chocolate cake that I’ve made in some months, and it turned out alright and so I’d say that if you were someone who bakes regularly or even ocassionally, you should be fine with this cake. My only mistake I felt was that the only chocolate I could source in a short time was 70% Belgium dark chocolate of which I felt compromised the taste as it was far too rich, so next time I will try and find maybe 48-52% cocao chocolate.

Mrs Ergül, My tips for you (based on your questions) would be changing from an 9″ pan to a 6″ is all about volume. We know mathematically that if you double the size (area) of an object, the volume is more then doubled (around 2.4x the original volume). Rough estimates though would be drop the portion of the ingredients by a third, minus 5% for error (therefore, your total ingredients should be around 70% of the listed in this recipe). Any leftover can be added to your pans as it’s only a small amount, or simply discard. Making 2 cakes and halving them might not work out so well because with the original quantities Deb provided I used 8″ pans, and each of the 4 cakes once baked were just over have an inch thick. It’d be a waste to make a cake that size into two layers.

As for the cream, any decorative pieces/icing for a cake can be of your own preference. If it’s fresh cream and not heavy cream (double cream for us Aussies), be sure that it’s whipped or thickened enough not to be runny otherwise it will spoil your cake. In Australia, fresh cream is usually one of the more runnier of cream products, though by definition if your country’s fresh cream isn’t runny, then I’ll let your judgment decide what’s best. Hope that helps! :)

By: Mrs Ergül

Mrs Ergül — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 07:07:04 +0000

Hi Deb, I am thinking of baking this for a small company. And I am thinking of doing it as a 6″ cake. How do you think I should go about adjusting the recipe to make it into a 6″ cake. Should I half it? If I half it, I should just use the quantities for the roll cake. Is there any way to bake the layers in two cakes and splitting them into 2 layers each to make a total of four layer? Like adjusting the baking temp and duration?

Also, is it possible to use the fresh cream to ice the cake too? So sorry for my many questions! I am just so not good at cakes. I have made the roll cake version of this recipe before but it broke, cracked and tor just too miserably……. But I totally adore the deep chocolaty but not overly sweet taste. So I thought I should just give the layer version a shot.

Thanks and sorry for being so long winded!

By: KZ

KZ — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 02:44:06 +0000

Just wanted to add that this recipe was a HUGE blessing as I worked in a kitchen at a camp and one of the groups that we had in had one person with celiacs. As our tradition, because it was her birthday we made her a cake, but needed a good flourless cake. This is excellent. Everyone enjoyed it (even the guys) and she was so surprised to have someone make her a flourless cake. Thanks!

By: Kate

Kate — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:17:52 +0000

This cake was a hit, but I found the layers very delicate. The only strategy which worked for me was to use springform pans, spray them completely, add my wax paper circles, spray THOSE, and then dust cocoa all over before pouring in the batter. Then, after baking, I froze the layers on the pan bottoms and, once they were frozen, eased them off with an icing spatula.

Because I had a no-milk-products mandate, I used a cherry filling which was a combination of homemade cherry-gooseberry preserves, and commercial cherry-gooseberry preserves doctored up with gooseberries. Honestly, it was all a bit much for me — I far preferred the Stout Gingerbread — but my guests praised it.