NANA’S FRENCH CHOCOLATE CAKE + Dehydrated Orange Wheels

A Flourless Chocolate Cake

This is my Nanas recipe, it is super dense and fudgey, so a little goes a long way. The recipe below is for one small cake but can be doubled or tripled and baked in a lined oven tray if making for a larger gathering. Creamy Greek yogurt compliments the slightly bitter chocolate perfectly, and I topped this cake with the last of our homegrown oranges, simply sliced and dried in the oven for several hours. The combination of chocolate, yogurt and orange is divine, enjoy!

Ingredients

• 150 g butter or coconut oil
• 150 g 70% dark chocolate
• 4 free range eggs
• 3 Tbsp sugar
• large pinch of salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 Tbsp ground almonds

To Serve

• 500 g thick Greek yogurt
• dehydrated orange wheels*

Instructions

• Preheat oven 175C. Line and grease a 20cm round cake tin.
• Melt butter gently in saucepan and add chocolate stirring until melted together. Remove from the heat. Beat together the eggs, sugar, salt and vanilla until creamy. Slowly pour in the chocolate mixture, beating to combine. Fold through the ground almonds. Pour into the lined tin and bake for 25 minutes. A bit of wobble is fine in the middle. Cool completely in the tin.
• To serve remove from the tin and top with the thick yogurt and decorate with slices of dehydrated orange or fresh berries.

Notes

*Dehydrated orange wheels - use a mandolin or sharp knife to slice an orange into 1mm thick rounds. Arrange in a single layer on a lined baking tray and dry for several hours in a 50C oven until firm. Alternatively use a dehydrator, but don't over dry them or they lose their glorious colour.

I have made this cake more times than I can count, it is my go-to cake recipe. It is one of my Nana’s treasured recipes and is originally called French Chocolate Cake. My Nana has many tried-and-true recipes and luckily many have been archived in several cookbooks. The first cookbook is for family members only and includes several hundred of Nana’s recipes, typed up and catalogued in a ring-bound folder. The other is a condensed version of the family cookbook called Memories From My Kitchen. This was created as a Nelson Hospice fundraiser, a project we embarked on after my Poppa died and we were so grateful for the hospice support. The book raised around $20,000 for the hospice and I know it has become a favourite in many local kitchens, including my own [unfortunately it is now out of print]. My copy is almost constantly flipped open to the page for this cake, so when I pull it down from the shelf it is ready to go. I actually know the recipe off-by-heart so not sure why I even bother to pull it down from the bookshelf, memories I suppose.

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