anzac biscuit tart

anzac biscuit tart

21 Apr 2025

In Australia and New Zealand we commemorate ANZAC Day on April 25. Rather than baking a batch of Anzac biscuits I thought I'd try my hand at making the Anzac Biscuit Tart from Tarts Anon.

The original recipe makes a 25cm tart so I needed to tweak the proportions to make a 16cm tart. I'd love to say that it all went smoothly, but it didn't and if/when I remake the tart I will make some key changes. 

The tart has many components - a pastry shell/a coconut caramel/an Anzac biscuit and a coconut and almond frangipane. I used my own shortcrust pastry recipe, and it was the only element that worked as it should.

The coconut caramel seized. The Anzac biscuit doubled in size and was way too thick. Because ithe biscuit was so thick, it prevented the heat getting to the coconut frangipane so even after 40 minutes, the filling wasn't completely cooked. The 40 minute bake time ensured the biscuit was so well cooked, that it was almost impossible to cut!

Plans for the future. Make the biscuit layer much, much thinner and sandwich the biscuit to the almost completely cooked tart with a thin layer of the coconut dulce de leche and bake it for another 5 minutes to fuse the 2 layers. Despite all the problems, the tart tasted absolutely amazing.

Here's the recipe for you which makes a 16cm tart. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20-ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Anzac Biscuit Tart 
Shortcrust pastry
120g plain flour
Pinch salt
60g cold unsalted butter, diced
2-3 tbs cold water

Coconut caramel 
40g coconut cream
100g caster sugar
5g salt
50 g milk
45 g butter
approx 50 g Dulce de Leche

 
Anzac biscuit 
35 g butter
6 g water
16 g golden syrup
40 g plain flour
25 g quick oats
40 g soft brown sugar
27 g desiccated coconut
pinch salt
1 tsp grated lemon rind 
1/8 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Coconut cake batter 
100 g butter 
30 g natural almond meal
40 g desiccated coconut
50 g plain flour
¼  tsp baking powder
pinch salt 
90 g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
80g eggs (1 and 1/2)

To finish 
Icing sugar, for dusting

Pastry
To make the pastry, combine all the dry ingredients in a food processor, and whiz for a few seconds until well combined and free of lumps. Add the cold butter and whiz until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add sufficient cold water and whiz until a soft dough just starts to form around the blade. Remove the dough from the food processor and gather the pastry into a ball; flatten slightly before wrapping in plastic and placing in the fridge. You’ll only need about 2/3 of the pastry dough to make a 16cm tart. The pastry freezes well so just wrap the remaining pastry in plastic wrap and store in the freezer. 

Refrigerate the pastry for an hour and then roll out thinly - 4mm thick. Line a greased 16 cm flan tin with the pastry then return to the fridge for another 30 minutes.

Coconut caramel
In a saucepan, bring the coconut cream to a simmer and set aside. Add the sugar, salt, milk and butter to another saucepan bring to gentle simmer over medium heat. Continue to cook while whisking, to ensure it doesn't burn, and reduce the liquid until the mixture becomes thick and caramelised. At this point, remove the caramel from the stove, add the coconut cream and whisk to combine. Give it a quick blitz with a hand-held blender until shiny, then allow to cool. Once set, weigh this mixture and mix with an equal weight of dulce de leche and store in a container.

Anzac biscuit
Preheat your oven to 150°C fan forced/170°C conventional. Line a tray with baking paper.

Place the butter, golden syrup and water in a saucepan and warm gently. Mix all of the dry ingredients, except the bicarbonate of soda, with the lemon rind in a bowl and set aside. Once the butter and syrup mixture has fully dissolved, bring to a simmer and whisk in the bicarbonate of soda. As soon as the syrup foams and expands, pour into the bowl of dry ingredients and mix well. 

Once a dough has formed, spoon it onto the lined baking tray, then spread thinly into a circle the same size as the base of your tart tin. Bake this mixture for 15 minutes, then turn the oven down to 120°C fan forced/140°C conventional and bake for a further 10 minutes. Then, while the biscuit is still hot, place the base of the tart tin on top and cut around it to get a clean circle.

Allow this to cool and set aside for later. Increase your oven temperature to 165°C, fan forced/185°C, conventional to preheat for baking the tart and place a baking tray on the middle shelf.

Coconut cake batter
Firstly, brown the butter. Place the 100g butter in a small saucepan over medium heat and cook gently until it turns a foamy tan brown and smells nutty. Remove the pan from the heat and pour into a heatproof bowl. Weigh the brown butter and if it’s less than 75g, just top it up with water. Place the bowl in the fridge for 15 minutes.

Weigh the dry ingredients, except the sugar, into a bowl and stir them together. 

Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla extract together in a large bowl until pale. Gradually add the eggs and mix until well combined.  Finally, mix in the dry ingredients, making sure that there are no lumps suspended throughout the batter.

To assemble and bake
To assemble the tart, spread 100 g of the coconut caramel over the base of the tart, then pour 325 g of the coconut batter on top. Place the biscuit circle on top, then transfer the tart into the preheated 165°C fan forced/185°C conventional oven to bake for approximately 30 minutes ( my filling wasn't cooked through after 40 minutes, so maybe 50 minutes to 1 hour) or until the crust is an even colour and the centre of the tart is firm. If the biscuit is getting too brown, cover with foil. Remove from the oven and allow to cool inside the tin.

Once cool, remove the tart from the tin and portion into slices. Finish each slice with a dusting of icing sugar.

It's always a pity when after so much hard work you can't cut a clean slice but not so bad when the tart tastes so delicious.

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian

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hot cross babka

hot cross babka

14 Apr 2025

When I started thinking about Easter, I knew I wanted to make something yeasted. Originally I was going to make some hot cross cinnamon rolls but with a long drive looming and with little time to bake and photograph before my midday departure, I pivoted and decided to make a babka instead.

Now just a warning - a babka is a labour of love. You do need to make the dough the day before because it benefits from an overnight rest in the fridge. Once rolled it's much easier to slice and roll the babka if the filling has firmed up a little, so you'll need another 30 minute or so sleep in the fridge. Once the babka has beeen rolled and is in the tin, you need time for it to rise. In some good news, the orange syrup that you pour over the babka can be made ahead of time.

I have made a hot cross babka before but not since I started using Nadine Ingram's hot cross bun recipe. The buns are so good, I just knew they would make an excellent babka base and it took all my will power to wait an hour for the babka to firm before I was able to remove it from the tin, slice it then photograph it for you.

Here's the recipe for you, which makes a large loaf cake, which I adapted from a Nadine Ingram recipe with babka instructions from Honey & Co. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20-ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Hot Cross Babka
Fruit Mix
45g each sultanas, raisins and currants
150 mls boiling water
1 Earl Grey tea bag
35g dried apricots, chopped or candied rind
finely grated rind of 1 orange

Dough
300g bread flour
3/4 tsp fine salt
1 and 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp each mixed spice and ground allspice
a pinch of cloves
7g dried yeast
45g softened unsalted butter
1 tbs soft brown sugar
1 egg
150 mls milk

Filling
50g very soft unsalted butter
100g light brown sugar
3 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch sea salt flakes
1 tbs almond meal
1 tsp syrup (golden or maple)

Topping
Egg wash (1 egg beaten with a pinch of table salt) or 1-2 tbs cream
1 batch orange syrup (recipe follows)

Orange syrup
50g caster sugar
1 tbs water
60mls strained orange juice

To serve
Butter

Fruit soak
Place the sultanas, raisins and currants, tea bag and boiling water in a bowl. Set aside for an hour or until the fruit is plump. Remove the tea bag and drain the fruit well, discarding the liquid. Pat the fruit dry with a paper towel. Just before using, add the dried apricots or candied rind and the orange zest .

Dough
Sift the flour, salt and spices into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook. Add the dried yeast, butter, sugar and egg. Mix together on a low speed adding enough milk to form a sticky dough. Once incorporated, increase the speed to medium and mix for 7 minutes. The dough will have pulled away from the side of the bowl forming a ball. Add the fruit mixture and continue to mix until incorporated. The dough will be quite sticky at this point. Place the dough into a large lightly greased bowl. Wrap the bowl in plastic wrap and place in the fridge to chill for at least 2 hours. You can leave it there for up to 12 hours, but not much longer or it will start to double in size.

Babka
The following day, bring the dough to room temperature. Grease and line a loaf tin with baking paper, allowing some overhang. In a small bowl mix the filling ingredients until they're well combined and form a smooth paste.

Roll out the dough with a rolling pin on a very lightly floured workbench to a rectangle about 15 inches x 11 inches. You may need to flip the dough over once or twice to get an even, smooth sheet, but try to work with as little flour as you can so as not to dry the dough out.

Lay the rectangle lengthways in front of you and spread the filling in a thin layer all over. Brush the edges of the dough with some water. Lift the long edge of the dough closest to you and start rolling it up away from you, keeping it nice and tight without stretching the dough, until you end up with a sausage about 15 inches long. If it comes out a little longer, push it in from both ends to condense it a little; if it comes out shorter, then use your hands to roll it out a little until it reaches 15 inches. Press to seal the dampened end onto the roulade and then use both hands to even out the roll into a perfect thick cigar. Rest the cigar on its seam.

Trim about ¾ in/2 cm off both ends of the roulade with a serrated knife. At this stage you can chill the dough for ½ hour to firm the filling. Now use the knife to gently cut the roll into half lengthwise, starting at the top and finishing at the seam. You are essentially dividing the log into two long even halves, with the layers of dough and filling visible along the length of both halves. With the cut sides facing up, gently press together one end of each half, and then lift the right half over the left half. Repeat this process, but this time lift the left half over the right, to create a simple, two-pronged plait. Gently squeeze together the other ends so that you are left with the two halves, intertwined, showing the filling on top. Carefully lift the cake into the loaf pan. Cover the pan with a wet tea towel and leave to rise in a warm place for 1 to 1½ hours. My babka was close to the rim of the loaf tin.

Preheat the oven to 220ºC (conventional), making sure you allow plenty of time for it to heat fully before the babka has finished rising. Remove the tea towel then brush the babka with the egg wash or cream. Reduce the temperature to 180ºC, conventional, and bake for 30-35 minutes or until dark golden brown. Place the cake on the middle rack of the oven, and bake for about 30 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. If not ready, return to the oven for another 5-10 minutes.

Make the orange syrup while the babka is baking. It can also be made in advance and stored in the fridge.

Orange syrup
While the babka in the oven, make the glaze. Combine the sugar, water and the juice and bring to a boil. Simmer for 5 minutes or until syrupy. As soon as the babka comes out of the oven, place it on a cooling rack and douse with the syrup. Leave to cool before removing the babka from the tin or it might disintegrate. The babka will keep for 3 days, wrapped and stored in an airtight container.

I can't tell you just how delicious this still warm from the oven babka tasted. It was divine. Toasted and topped with ice cream it made for a killer dessert.

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian

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passover week 2025 - passover hazelnut pear and quark cake

passover week 2025 - passover hazelnut pear and quark cake

11 Apr 2025

For my final bake for Passover Week 2025, I decided to make something a bit more elaborate. It may feel familiar because I have made this cake before but I renovated it for Passover by using potato starch instead of plain flour. In so doing, it also became a gluten free cake.

The original cake had a ricotta filling but as that isn't available here during Passover I looked for an alternative. You can make a ricotta style curd cheese at home but it's a time consuming process and you'll need to make it the day before assembling the filling. The alternate option is quark, which is available here during Passover. Quark is quite sour so I reduced the amount of quark in the filling and doubled the quantity of cream. The filling needs time to set, so you'll need to start the process the day before you serve the cake.

Here's the recipe for you which makes a 17cm cake. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Passover pear, hazelnut and quark cake 
Hazelnut sponge 
125g eggs 
100g caster sugar
Pinch salt 
125g hazelnut meal
50g potato or tapioca starch
3 tsp grated lemon rind
40g melted butter, hot 

Pear filling
2 small ripe William pears 
50g caster sugar
1 tbs water
1/2 Vanilla pod, scraped

Cream 
250g whipping cream (35% fat)

125g quark
50g caster sugar or to taste
1/2 vanilla pod, scraped or 1 tsp vanilla paste
To serve – icing sugar

Hazelnut sponge
Heat an oven to 180°C, conventional and arrange a rack in the middle. Grease and flour a 17cm cake tin with potato starch then line the base with baking paper. Combine the sugar, eggs with a good pinch of salt in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment and beat until the mixture becomes very pale and fluffy and triples in size, about 5 minutes. Combine the hazelnut meal and flour and fold in ⅓ at a time. Lastly fold in the lemon rind and butter and mix until just incorporated.

Evenly pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin and level off. Bake until browned and springy on top, about 40 to 45 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool completely. Oven temperatures do vary, so if you’re finding the cake colours a bit early, cover the cake with foil for the remainder of the bake

Pear filling
Peel, core and dice the pear into 1-2 cm cubes. Place the diced pear, sugar, water, vanilla seeds and the scraped vanilla pod  into a small pan. Place over a medium heat then simmer until the pears begin to cook and release liquid and soften, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat, drain the pears reserving the syrup, transfer the pears to a bowl, and cool completely.

Cream filling
Whip the drained quark with 25g sugar until very smooth and creamy. Gently whip the cream with half the remaining sugar and the vanilla seeds or paste until soft peaks form. Fold a third of the quark into the whipped cream mixture, then fold the whipped cream mixture back into the quark mixture until just combined. Check for sweetness and add the remaining sugar if needed. Gently fold through the cooled pears. 

Assembly
Line the sides of the same cake pan you used to bake the cake with baking paper. Split the cake horizontally. Place one cake layer in the cake pan, then drizzle 1 to 2 tablespoons of pear syrup evenly over the cake. Spoon over the quark mixture and smooth over with a spatula. Drizzle the rest of the reserved pear syrup over the base of the top layer of sponge and carefully place the cake on top of the quark filling. 

Chill the cake for several hours in the fridge or overnight. Remove the cake from the pan, dust with icing sugar, then cut carefully into slices with a sharp knife and serve.

To ensure a clean cut I used a serrated knife to cut through the top layer and the filling.

That's the final bake for Passover Week 2025. I hope you enjoyed all the bakes I shared with you.

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian

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passover week 2025 - passover fig and earl grey sponge cake

passover week 2025 - passover fig and earl grey sponge cake

10 Apr 2025

For Passover Week 2025, I decided to renovate the Fig and Earl Grey Victoria Sponge cake I made earlier in the year. As a Victoria sponge cake is out of the question during Passover, I made a genoise sponge instead, adapted from this Beatrix Bakes recipe. 

Instead of plain flour I used a mix of superfine matzo meal and potato or tapioca starch. Superfine matzo meal is much more absorbent than regular flour, so I played around with the proportions a bit, otherwise I would have ended up with 2 hockey pucks instead of sponge cakes. Just to ensure the cakes weren't too dry I did brush some milk over each sponge.

As it's autumn in Sydney, both figs and raspberries are in abundance so I decorated the cake with fresh figs, a few berries and a dusting of icing sugar. If it isn't fig season where you live, use any fruit jam you like. Raspberry jam is a particularly delicious option. If you don't like the flavour of Earl Grey tea, just leave the cream unflavoured or flavour with vanilla. 

Here's the recipe for you which makes a 17cm layer cake. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Passover fig and earl grey sponge cake - makes a 17cm layer cake
40g superfine matzo meal 
80g potato starch 
pinch salt
135g caster sugar
4 eggs
80g unsalted butter
1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped 

Filling
300ms cream
1-2 tsp earl grey tea leaves
½ cup fig and earl grey jam
1-2 figs, sliced

Topping
3-4 fresh figs
A few fresh berries
Icing sugar

Method
The night before you plan to bake the cake, pour the cream into a bowl and add the earl grey tea leaves. Leave it to cold steep overnight. 

Cake
Pre-heat the oven to 180°C, conventional. Grease and line the base of two 17cm tins with baking paper then dust with potato starch. 

Combine the matzo meal, potato starch and salt together, then sift onto a piece of greaseproof paper.

Over a pot of barely simmering water, heat the sugar and the eggs in the mixer bowl until they are hot to the touch. Pop the mixer bowl onto a stand mixer or use an electric hand whisk and whisk for 8 minutes on a medium/high speed until the egg mix is pale, fluffy and can hold a peak. While this is whisking, brown the butter. Heat the butter in a saucepan over a low heat until the butter starts to turn a toasty brown. Remove from heat, add vanilla seeds and set aside.

Gently scrape the egg mix into a wide, large-ish mixing bowl. Sift over half the Passover baking mix/salt mix and gently fold in with a whisk, turning the mix over while spinning the bowl slowly. Fold in the remaining sifted Passover baking mix until it has been fully incorporated. Slowly pour in the warm melted butter mix and fold in. Scrape the mix into the prepared tins and smooth the tops a little.
Pop the tins into the oven and bake until lightly bouncy in the centre and golden brown, about 20-25 minutes. I usually rotate the tins midway through the baking process. Immediately turn the cakes out onto a tea towel covered rack, remove the baking paper then invert. Let cool completely. 

Assembly
Place the first cake layer onto a serving plate and top with the jam, the sliced fig and half of the cream. Refrigerate the cake for 30 minutes to firm up the cream, then top with the second layer. Dollop on the rest of the whipped cream and decorate with the fresh figs and berries. 

Dollop on the rest of the whipped cream and decorate with the fresh figs and berries. If liked, you can dust with icing sugar just before serving. Refrigerate until serving time.

If liked, you can dust with icing sugar just before serving. Refrigerate until serving time.

The cake received glowing reviews from my taste testers, so that made me happy. I might reduce the quantity of dry ingredients next time, just to make the sponge even more light and fluffy.

See you all again tomorrow with the final bake for Passover Week 2025.

Bye for now,

Jillian

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passover week 2025 - passover raspberry frangipane tart

passover week 2025 - passover raspberry frangipane tart

9 Apr 2025

At Passover I like to challenge myself by making a dessert which involves pastry. The most successful pastry recipe I've used is adapted from an Aran Goyoaga gluten free pastry recipe but unfortunately the link to the pastry recipe is broken. 

I use a combination of superfine matzo meal, almond meal and potato or tapioca starch. This year the superfine matzo meal was very dark and a little more grainy than usual. The pastry came together easily, rolled out quite well but when baked it was very fragile and crumbly and I was quite sure I had a disaster on my hand. Once the tart had cooled, I put it in the fridge and left it in there for a few hours after which time the crust had firmed up and I was able to unmould the tart shell and cut neat slices of the tart. The pastry was quite crunchy and whilst not unpleasant, it's not how it normally bakes. I blame the superfine matzo meal.

Initially I was going to make an apple galette but at the last minute decided to make a frangipane tart instead. The brown butter frangipane filling is adapted from a Natalie Paull recipe and you can top the tart with almost any fruit you like. Pears, figs, plums, oven roasted rhubarb, apricots and other berries would all work. Natalie recommends using frozen berries when making the tart as fresh berries won't hold up to the long cooking time. 

Here's the recipe for you which makes an 11 x 35cm oblong tart or a 2cm deep 16cm round tart. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Passover raspberry frangipane tart
Pastry 
125g superfine matzo meal
25g almond meal
2 tbs tapioca or potato starch
1 tbs caster sugar
pinch sea salt
110g unsalted butter, cut into 1cm pieces
1 egg 
4 tablespoons iced water

Frangipane 
120g unsalted butter, squidgy soft
100g caster sugar
1 tsp finely grated orange rind
1 room temperature egg 
110g almond meal
pinch fine sea salt 
1 tbs orange juice
1 tsp vanilla extract or the seeds of 1/2 a vanilla bean
½ cup raspberry jam

For the topping
100g frozen raspberries
50 g flaked almonds
15 g unsalted butter
20 g raw sugar

Pastry
Combine the first 5 ingredients in the food processor and pulse to aerate. Add the diced butter and pulse ten times until butter is the size of peas. Whisk together the egg and 2 tablespoons of ice water. Add it to the dough and pulse until it comes together. Add more ice water if needed. Knead the dough a couple of times and wrap it in plastic wrap forming a flat disc and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Place the pastry on a floured surface then cover the pastry with baking paper and roll to 5mm thick. Carefully line either a 2cm-deep x 16cm-diameter tart ring or an 11 x 35cm oblong tin with the pastry. The pastry will break apart easily, but just press it with your fingers to bring it together. Trim and refrigerate the pastry for 60 minutes.

Frangipane
Start the frangipane by cooking half (60g) of the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat until it turns a foamy tan brown. Scrape it into the bowl of an electric stand mixer to cool for 15 minutes. 

Add the remaining butter, sugar and orange rind with the browned butter to the bowl of the electric stand mixer. With the paddle attachment, beat the ingredients on medium for about 8 minutes until the mix is pale and fluffy. Scrape the bowl down with a stiff plastic spatula twice during this. Add the egg in two additions, allowing the creamed base to re-fluff up between additions. If the creamed mixture separates from the temperature difference of too fast egg addition, just keep going, it will be dense but still delicious.

Weigh the almond meal and salt and set aside. Stop the mixer and scrape the mix off the paddle attachment. We are working by hand and using a stiff plastic spatula now. Add the orange juice and the vanilla and mix well. Tip in the almond meal and salt and stir thoroughly. 

To assemble
Spoon the jam into the base of the tart. Dollop the frangipane over the jam and level the frangipane with an offset spatula. Chill the filled shell, uncovered, for an hour (or covered overnight) before topping. 

To bake
Preheat the oven to 190°C, conventional and place a heavy baking tray on the middle shelf. 

Remove the tart from the fridge and place the still frozen raspberries over the top of the filling then pinch small fingerfuls of the flaked almonds and push them into the frangipane around and alongside the berries. Melt the butter and drizzle over the top of the tart with a spoon or pastry brush, then sprinkle the raw sugar over the top.

Place the tart onto the preheated tray in the oven and immediately lower the temperature to 170°C conventional. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until the top and sides of the crust look deeply golden tanned. Place on a rack and cool completely. The crust will be very tender and will disintegrate if you try unmoulding the tart. When cool, place the tart in the fridge for a few hours or overnight until the crust is firm.

If you like, you can serve the tart topped with a few fresh berries and a dusting of icing sugar.

The tart was devoured by neighbours with nary a comment about the pastry so it all worked out in the end. Phew. 

See you all again tomorrow with another bake for Passover Week 2025.

Bye for now,

Jillian

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passover week 2025 - Flour and Stone siren chocolate cake

passover week 2025 - Flour and Stone siren chocolate cake

7 Apr 2025

Welcome to the first bake for Passover Week 2025 and it's a cracker. 6 months ago I ordered a copy of Nadine Ingram's new book Love Crumbs from the library. In February the book finally arrived and I perused it from cover to cover, bookmarking recipes I'd like to make. Each year I like to make a flourless chocolate cake for Passover and as soon as I saw Nadine's recipe for her Siren chocolate cake, I knew I'd found my cake for Passover week 2025.

Like most of Nadine's recipes, making this cake involves many steps but her recipes are very detailed and if you follow her instructions, you should be fine. Most of the recipes in Love Crumbs give quantities for a 20cm and a 25cm cake so I needed to do some tweaking so I could make a 17cm cake.

During passover you don't have too many chocolate choices. I did not use the Valrohna chocolate suggested as at $171/kilo it was a little out of my price range, so I used a combination of 70% chocolate, 45% chocolate and some milk chocolate and the cake was still deeply, darkly chocolate in taste. 

The cake is not meant to be made in a springform tin because it's baked in a water bath however almost all my tins are springform, so I double wrapped the base of the tin in foil and tied it with string. It seemed to do the trick. Also, a note about oven temperatures. The book doesn't mention whether the temperatures are for a fan-forced or a conventional oven. I have made quite a few of Nadine's recipes in the past and I always add 20°C to her suggested temperatures, as they are too low for my oven.

Here's the recipe for you which makes a 17cm cake. Please note the recipe link gives quantities for the 20cm and 25cm cakes. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Flourless sour cherry and chocolate cake

Ingredients

120g Valrhona Manjari chocolate (minimum 64 per cent cocoa solids), plus extra 50g

40g Valrhona Jivara chocolate (minimum 40 per cent cocoa solids)

50g unsalted butter
80g whole almonds, skin on and toasted
4 eggs, separated
85g caster sugar
20g good-quality cocoa powder
pinch salt

1/4 tsp sea salt flakes, plus extra to serve
100g frozen sour cherries

clotted or thick cream, to serve (optional)

Method
1 Preheat the oven to 160°C, conventional. Line a 17 cm round cake tin with baking paper using the following instruction. This cake will be baked in a water bath, so you need to use a conventional tin, not a springform tin, to ensure it doesn't leak. On this occasion, you won't be tipping the cake upside down to get it out, instead you will be levering it out with the aid of two paper strips lining the base of the tin. So before you line the tin, lay a couple of long baking paper strips approximately 5 cm-wide and 40 cm-long crossing over one another so they meet in the centre of the tin, then run the strips up the sides and over the vim. Now line the tin as you usually do and do and set it aside. 

2 Half-fill a deep tray large enough to fit your cake tin with water and place it in the preheating oven.

3 Combine the 120g Manjari chocolate, all the Jivara chocolate, and the butter in a large (sounds excessive but bear with me) heatproof bowl and place over a saucepan of barely simmering water, making sure the bowl isn't touching the water, to half melt. Once half-melted, turn the heat off, and leave the bowel on top of the saucepan.

4 Meanwhile, place the extra 50g Manjari chocolate in a food processor and blitz to a fine crumb using the pulse function or pausing intermittently between 4 second spurts. This method allows the chocolate to fall from the sides of the processor back into the bowl and will ultimately form a fine, even crumb it the chocolate into a bowl without the chocolate overheating or melting. Decant the chocolate into a bowl, then add the toasted almonds to the food processor and blitz using the same method until they are just roughly chopped. Remove 25g of the coarsest almonds to use for the top of the cake and continue to blitz the remaining almonds until they form fine crumbs, then add these to the bowl with the Manjari crumb.

5 Place the egg yolks in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and whisk on medium speed, then add half the caster sugar, increase the speed to high and beat until very pale and tripled in volume. Remove the bowl of chocolate from the saucepan and stir it to thoroughly combine the chocolate and butter, then, half at a time, gently fold through the whipped yolks with a spatula. Sift the cocoa directly over the chocolate mixture and fold through until well combined. Add the ground almonds and chocolate crumbs and fold to combine. You'll find that large bowl coming into play now. 

6 Whip the egg whites with a pinch of salt in a clean and dry electric mixer bowl fitted with the whisk attachment on high speed. When soft ribbons start to form, reduce the speed to medium and gradually add the remaining caster sugar, then beat until glossy and firm peaks form. Be careful not to overwhip.

7 Gently fold half the whipped meringue into the chocolate, pressing out any lumps of meringue that may have formed. Fold in remaining meringue, then pour the cake batter into the prepared tin and smooth the top with an offset palette knife. Scatter the coarsely chopped almonds evenly over the top of the cake and sprinkle with sea salt.

8 Place the cake tin into the water bath in the oven, ensuring the water comes halfway up the sides of the tin. If the tin starts to float, remove some of the water until it makes contact with the base of the tray again. Bake the cake for 25 minutes, then open the oven door and scatter the sour cherries over the top of the cake like a wreath. Reduce the oven temperature to 150°C, conventional (I kept the temperature the same) and bake the cake for a further 60 minutes.

9 Once this time is up, the cake will spring back when pressed in the middle, although it will still seem a little wobbly. Turn the oven off, leaving the cake in the oven with the oven door slightly ajar to cool for 1 hour. If your oven door doesn't stay ajar by itself, use a wooden spoon wedged into the door to allow the heat to escape. Cooling the cake this way will help it to set and reduce the dramatic sinking that flourless chocolate cakes usually encounter.

10 After 1 hour the cake can be removed from the oven and from the water bath to cool completely in the tin. Ideally, this cake should be set overnight or 'express set' in the fridge for 4 hours because it is very mousse-y and this will make it easier to remove from the tin. To unmould the cake, gently tug at the four strips of baking paper hanging over the rim to release the cake from the base. Then pull upwards, angling the cake at 45 degrees to slide it out onto a serving platter. Even better if you have a friend who can pull up on two of the strips as you pull up on the other two. I recommend using a hot knife to cut this cake. Sprinkle it with extra sea salt to serve. I like to serve it with clotted or thick cream.

11 There is no need to refrigerate this cake after it has been removed from the tin. If you have leftovers, just leave it out at room temperature.

The end result is an elegant, adult tasting chocolate cake with little bursts of sour from the cherries and texture from the toasted almonds. Definitely a fiddle to make but I think the end justifies the means.

See you all again tomorrow with another bake for Passover week 2025.

Bye for now,

Jillian

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