TARTINE CHOCOLATE CAKE

TARTINE CHOCOLATE CAKE

I'm in Cape Town at the moment struggling with jet-lag. I should be fast asleep but I'm not so I thought I'd post this recipe. There are many June babies at work so to celebrate we had a joint work birthday tea just before I flew to Cape Town. I've had this Tartine chocolate almond cake recipe bookmarked for a while so I decided to bake it.

The cake uses almond flour so its gluten free. It also eschews extra fat in the cake batter, relying on the fat from the almond meal and from a topping and filling of whipped cream.

Instead of making a double layer cake I decided to half the recipe to make a loaf cake. It meant using less jam and cream and for that reason I found the cake wasn't quite sweet enough. Maybe halving the cake and sandwiching the 2 layers with a layer of jam would be a good idea or otherwise increasing the caster sugar a little to ½ cup.

Here's the recipe for you. For all my recipes I use a 250 ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon. All eggs are 60 grams and my oven is a conventional oven not fan forced, so you may need to reduce your oven temperature by 20°C.

Tartine Chocolate-Almond Cake - makes one loaf tin

Ingredients

2 cups almond flour (sift it if there are lumps)
35 g cocoa powder, sifted
½ teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs
40 grams caster sugar
¼ cup firmly packed brown sugar
½ tsp vanilla
¼ teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon white vinegar
¾ cup milk
⅓ cup blackberry jam (sieved)
2 tsp water
1 cup of cream, whipped and lightly sweetened and flavoured with vanilla
Chocolate curls (optional)

Method

Preheat the oven to 350° F (180° C). Grease and line a small loaf tin with baking paper.
In a bowl, combine the almond flour, cocoa powder, and baking soda and mix well, making sure that any lumps of almond flour are broken up.
Using a handheld mixer or a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the eggs, caster sugar, brown sugar, vanilla and salt on high speed until very thick and pale in colour, about 3 minutes. When you lift up the whisk, a ribbon of beaten eggs should trail back into the bowl.
Whisk the vinegar, milk into the egg mixture. Pour the milk-egg mixture into the almond meal mixture and whisk until combined. Pour the batter into the cake tin. Evenly space dots of the jam over the top of the cake. If the jam is too thick to drop off the spoon, slightly thin by stirring in the water. Bake until the cake is set and a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cakes comes out clean, 50 minutes to 1 hour.

Set the pan on a cooling rack and let cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Unmould the cake and peel away the baking paper. Allow to cool completely. When cool, place on a serving plate and top with the whipped cream and chocolate curls, if using. Serve at room temperature.

If you look very closely you can see the little pockets of jam at the base of the cake. I used blackberry jam but you can use any jam you like. Make sure you use a seedless jam though or sieve the jam first to avoid any unwanted seeds.