I was never fan of classic cream cakes (except being a baby, when eating cream and decorating all my face and clothes with, and teasing my parents this way as I guess this is so much fun for a baby). I used to love my mum’s fruit sponge cakes as they were light and not greasy at all. Nowadays I probably enjoy the most easy chocolate cakes alias ‘fondant au chocolat’. They are moist enough so no cream is needed, maybe just the cream to go with. My favourite that never disappoints, is the Moist Chocolate-Banana Cake where I use banana to replace the butter. But let me present you another gourmet and easy recipe for a chocolate cake – this time chocolate cake with hazelnuts and prunes in Porto wine.
- 170 g prunes without pits, chopped into pieces
- 125 ml red Porto wine
- 200 g good quality dark chocolate
- 100 g butter
- 5 eggs
- 150 g sugar
- 180 g ground hazelnuts
- 2 tbsp. cocoa powder
- butter and flour for the mould (no need if you have a silicon bake mould)
- 300 ml whipping cream
- 2 tsp icing sugar
- Place the prunes chopped into small pieces and Porto wine in a small saucepan, bring to boil. Lower the heat and boil for about 2 minutes, until the liquid is reduced into half.
- Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease and flour round cake mould of 22 cm diameter (no need if you have a silicon bake mould).
- Melt the chocolate with the butter in a double boiler.
- In a bigger bowl, beat the egg yolks with sugar. Add prunes in Porto wine and melted chocolate with butter, then stir in the ground hazelnuts.
- Beat the egg whites using a paddle mixer and carefully stir them into the dough.
- Distribute the cake batter into the prepared cake mould and bake it for 50 minutes. Verify with a toothpick, whether done – you should get it back with few moist crumbs. Leave the cake cool down for about 20 minutes, then take it out carefully from the mould and leave it cool down still a bit on the baking grille.
- Prepare the cream: whip the cream together with icing sugar, keep in the fridge until serving.
- Serve the cake sprinkled with cocoa powder, accompanied with the cream.
Have you tried the recipe?
Please do let me know how it turned out – you can do that either via leaving a comment below or sharing your picture on Instagram using the hashtag #1001voyagesgourmands !