Torta Caprese
Capri's Flourless Chocolate and Almond Cake
Dark chocolate, butter, sugar, eggs and ground almonds, and no flour. The cake has a thin, crackled crust and a damp, almost fudgy middle, and it keeps for days.
The Italian recipe read toasts and coarsely grinds the almonds, melts chocolate with butter, beats yolks with sugar, folds everything together with stiffly whipped whites and bakes it at 180°C for about 35 minutes, leaving the centre moist. It repeats the story that the cake was created on Capri in the 1920s by the pastry cook Carmine Di Fiore, who is said to have forgotten the flour.
Ingredients
Ingredients
- 180 g whole almonds
- 125 g dark chocolate (about 70 per cent cocoa), chopped
- 125 g unsalted butter, plus extra for the tin
- 125 g caster sugar
- 3 large eggs, separated
- Icing sugar, to finish
Method
- Prepare Heat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan). Butter an 18 cm springform tin and line the base. Toast the almonds on a tray for 8 minutes, cool, then grind them coarsely; they should be gritty, not a powder.
- Melt Melt the chocolate and butter together in a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water, stirring, then cool for 5 minutes.
- Mix Beat the yolks with the sugar for 3 to 4 minutes until pale and thick. Fold in the chocolate mixture, then the almonds.
- Fold in the whites Whisk the whites in a clean bowl to stiff peaks. Stir a spoonful into the batter to loosen it, then fold in the remainder gently in two additions.
- Bake Pour into the tin and bake for 35 minutes, until the top is cracked and firm and a skewer comes out with a few moist crumbs. Cool in the tin for 20 minutes, turn out and dust with icing sugar when cold.
Do not overbake. The centre should stay moist.