Lora Brody's Bête Noire (Intense Chocolate Cake) - 1983

So I was having a little bit of a problem. The book was so big, that I was feeling overwhelmed. With over a thousand recipes, and just one me, I was just kind of blindly landing on recipes in the book, and cooking them. Which works, but doesn't have very much direction. There were also recipes that I would come upon that I would think: "I should make that for my sister! Or that one for my cousin! or that one my mom!" 


So I got a pack of small post its, and went to town on the book.  The pink, orange and yellow recipes were ones that I thought "hey, that looks good!" when flipping through the chapter.  The green are ones that I want to make for others (with their name written on it, so I remember). 


All of this leads to Lora Brody's Bête Noire. When I read the recipe, my hand immediately reached for the green post-its, so I could write my friend Lisa's name on it.  She loves all, deep, intense chocolate desserts- Molten chocolate cakes, dark chocolate mousse, If it is dark, and chocolatey, and awesome, she's there.  I knew I had to make it for her. 

Chocolate cake with My friend Bryan's Strawberry Cheesecake Ice Cream

So we were all getting together to watch Steel Magnolias, and Katie and Lisa were making pizzas. (Oh, MAN Lisa's pizzas are great)  I thought it would be a good opportunity to make this cake (and also flat and chewy chocolate chip cookies, which I'll be writing about later). 

When you look at this recipe, it can seem intimidating. It involves a candy thermometer,  and cooking sugar, and whipping lots of eggs. Do not be afraid! It is not as hard as it seems.  You cook sugar and water until it reaches 220 degrees. Then you mix in chopped chocolate (a combo of unsweetened and semisweet) and stir until the chocolate is melted. (The recipe says that it might seize here, but that's okay, mine did not seize though, so woo!)  after that, you mix in butter, slowly, until all the butter is melted.  It is at this point, when I began to hum in the kitchen (I always seem to be humming to myself when a recipe is going well)  I went over to my trusty stand mixer, and began to whisk the eggs, (and some more sugar) until they had tripled in size. I slowly added the chocolate mixture to the eggs, and then took it out  of the mixer and stirred it by hand until it was all incorporated. 

I put it into a parchment lined, buttered cake pan, that was set in my cast iron skillet, poured boiling water around it, and baked it for a half hour. 

I got my stuff together, and got into my car to drive to my friends' house. The cake smelled so delicious, that I was seriously tempted to rummage around and find a fork and dig in right there on the highway.  I should have put it in the trunk. 

Just before it was time to serve the cake, I stuck it into a 200 degree oven for ten minutes to warm it up, and served it along with my friend Bryan's awesome strawberry cheesecake ice cream (he also had blueberry).  The cake was amazing. Not too dense, but truly chocolatey, and dark.  The recipe said serves 6 to 8, and I cut it into eight pieces,  and even then, the slices were a little too big. The cake is so rich, that it would have easily been enough with half of the size slice I had. (not that that stopped me from eating most of it) 

So good. 

If you want to impress the chocolate lover in your life- make this, right now.