Flourless Chocolate Tort

As seen on Quick Fork 6: Booze in your Tort.

Ingredients:

• 8 oz of bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate
• 2 sticks of butter
• 1 1/2 cups of sugar
• 6 eggs
• 1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/3 cup of Frangelico (optional)

Break up the chocolate into chunks and melt together with the butter in a double-boiler (making sure that the bottom of the pan doesn’t come into contact with the water). Take off heat and whisk in 1 1/2 cups of sugar. Whisk in 6 eggs, adding one at a time until they are all combined. You can either do this with a whisk (which is hard, but worth while work) or with a handmixer. Most of the time I opt for the easy way and use the handmixer. Sift in 1 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder, whisking slowly and carefully to encorporate. Add 1/3 a cup of Frangelico or other liquor of your choice or you can also leave this out if you prefer your cake to be non-alcoholic. Cut out a circle of parchment paper that corresponds with the bottom of your springform pan. Butter the pan thoroughly and line the bottom with your circle of paper. Pour in cake batter and bake for about 50 minutes (times will vary slightly depending on your over and locational humidity. In my oven it takes longer to bake in the summer because July in Philly can be awfully muggy) at 350 degrees. You want the cake tester to come out mostly clean, but it’s okay if it has a bit of chocolate on the bottom. Let it cool for at least twenty minutes before removing the springform pan.

This cake can be made several days in advance and also freezes really well.

I always serve it with a fruit sauce. Most often I take a couple of bags of frozen raspberries or blackberries, put them in a pot and heat them up with a little sugar over a low flame until the sugar dissolves and the berries get soft. Dividing it up into a couple of batches, I run the sweetened fruit through the blender to get everything nice and mushy. Then I work it through a strainer to get the seeds out. What you have left behind is a gorgeous, sweet, deep red sauce. Barely sweetened whipped cream isn’t bad with this either. Or creme fraiche. Or even a creamcheese frosting. Really, the options are limitless.