Chocolate Pave

Because I love my coworkers (most of them) and I love to bake, when their birthdays roll around, I find it hard not to bake them some kind of treat for their special day.  This Valentine's Day my coworker Jason had a birthday. :)

Last year, I had made him a white cake with strawberry frosting, and this year I decided to dig into my chocolate drawer again.  What follows is one of the easiest and richest flourless cakes I have made in a long time.  David calls it a chocolate pave cake.  In French, pave means paving stones, and the cake was named thus for it's 'cobbled' appearance after baking. 

The cake itself took about 20 minutes to put together, 35 minutes of baking time and 5 minutes to decorate.  Not only is it rich, luscious and totally into chocolate overdrive, but it looks pretty decorated with powdered sugar and melted chocolate, so it's simple from beginning to end, and really, really simple to eat.  :)

From Ready for Dessert:

Chocolate Pave

You will need:

Chocolate/cocoa powder for preparing your baking pan

1 cup salted or unsalted butter, cut into pieces

4 ounces of unsweetened baking chocolate

4 ounces of semisweet baking chocolate

6 large eggs, separated

1/2 cup plus 1/2 cup of sugar

pinch of salt

Powdered sugar, for dusting (decorating)

melted chocolate for decorating

How to:

Preheat oven to 350.

Butter the bottom and sides of your baking pan well.  Dust with cocoa and shake off excess.  Line the bottom of your pan with wax/parchment paper.

In a large heatproof bowl, combine the butter and both chocolates.  Set the bowl over a pan of simmering water, stirring occasionally until the mixture is melted and smooth.  Remove the bowl from the heat.  (Now, I just melted the chocolate and butter in a saucepan until it was smooth making sure it wouldn't burn.  It was easier this way for me.)

IN a stand mixer fitted with the whip attachment, whisk together the egg yoks and 1/2 cup of sugar on high speed until it ribbons when you remove the whisk.  It took six minutes for me.

Fold in the melted chocolate mixture until fully combined.  Since the chocolate is hot, this will "curdle" the egg mixture, but just keep stirring.  It won't ever be silky smooth, but as long as it is completely mixed you are fine.

In a clean bowl, beat the whites with the pinch of salt until it forms wet peaks, about two minutes.  Then you add the 1/2 sugar gradually until the mixture is white and stiff, about 8 minutes or so.  

Fold the whites into the chocolate mixture.  It will seem like a lot of whites, but trust me, just keep incorporating until the whites are gone.  Do not overmix.  Just mix until you no longer see streaks of white.

Pour mixture into the prepared pan and bake for 35 minutes.  The center will still be jiggly.  Don't panic if your cake cracks.  Mine had a crater size crack in it, but once I took it out of the oven, the crack closed in on itself as the cake fell.  It will look cracked, it's supposed to.  ;)

Let it cool for fifteen minutes and run a knife around the sides to loosen it.  Invert the cake onto a platter and remove the paper, and re-invert onto a new platter.  The first platter doesn't matter, but you should re-invert onto your serving platter so you don't have to worry about it breaking if you use your hand to transfer.  If you use two plates, you can sandwich the cake between them to avoid any breakage.

Melt chocolate for decorating and using a fork, wave it over the cake to drizzle it with the chocolate.  Then add the powdered sugar.  

And that's it!