by Elisabetta Borello
A winter bakery delight cake to be enjoyed with friends and family, so greedy and easy to cook. The ingredients? Bittersweet chocolate, almonds and extra virgin olive oil…This cake offers a great option for food intolerances, it’s gluten-free and dairy-free (it does not contain lactose, infact butter is substituted for olive il).
Ingredients:
(Serve a 22 cm cake)
70 gr natural or blanched whole almonds
35 gr sweet rice flour
150 gr white sugar
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 pinch of salt
4 eggs, separated at room temperature
100 ml extra virgin olive oil
170 g bittersweet chocolate with 70-72% cacao mass, roughly chopped
Method
1 Preheat the oven to 170°C. In a medium bowl, grind the almonds with the flour in a food processor, then add 100 gr of the sugar.
2 Place the chocolate, oil and salt in a large, metal bowl. Place the bowl in a skillet filled with 2″ of barely simmering water, and stir frequently until the chocolate is melted. Remove the bowl from the skillet and whisk in the almond mixture until combined.
3 Whisk in the egg yolks
4 Place the egg whites, the baking powder and the bicarbonate in the bowl of a stand mixer. Whip on medium-high speed until foamy, then gradually pour in the remaining sugar, whipping the whites until they hold soft peaks.
5 Stir 1/3 of the whipped whites into the chocolate mixture, then gently fold in the remaining whites until the batter is just combined and no streaks remain. Immediately scrape the batter into the prepared pan (22 cm), and smooth the top. Bake the cake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with moist crumbs, 40-45 minutes.
The original recipe calls for 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar, but I didn’t have it so I substituted it for baking powder and bicarbonate. If gluten isn’t an issue, you can use use all-purpose wheat flour in place of the rice.
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