Flourless Chocolate Cake

It was my birthday this week. I spent a fun evening with my friend Karen at the Kananaskis Nordic Spa enjoying the hot pools and enduring the cold ones. At -24° C it was an interesting experience, and a purportedly healthy one too. Cold immersion is reported to help convert white fat to brown fat, well, beige fat – which helps to ramp up your metabolism. For me it was an exercise in willpower as I honestly dislike the cold so I focused on the steam rising from the pools and watching the stars on a beautiful clear evening.

The setting is gorgeous and the beauty of the rising sun on the mountains the next morning reminds me that we should get out of the house and into the mountains more often!

As the week has been spent celebrating (one should get more celebratory days the older one gets in my opinion) yet another passing year I decided to bake myself a nice low carb flourless birthday cake. It seemed like a great way to top off a wonderful week with friends and family.

Adding the words low carb to the name of this cake honestly feels like a bit of a gimmick as flourless chocolate cake is a classic dessert which we are really just redefining as low carb by changing up our choice of sweetener. There are many, many versions of this cake out on the internet and it is, with the exception of the sugar usually in it, a pretty naturally low carb cake as it is made mostly with eggs and very dark chocolate.

Being soufflé like this cake puffs right up in the oven and then sinks in on itself just a bit. It amuses me that it looks a bit wonky – it feels sort of cartoon like to me. It wouldn’t win any awards for perfectly pretty cakes, but it wins big time in the super chocolatey taste department.

By subbing the added sugar in this recipe for a suitable lower carb sweetener and using a good lower carb dark chocolate, and by keeping serving sizes small (that’s easy as it is quite a rich cake!), this cake can come in at around 6 – 8 net carbs per slice. That’s peanuts for a rich and delicious cake.

For the sweetener I like an erythritol and monkfruit blend that I buy at Bulk Barn. Lacanto makes a name brand one that is really good. You could easily use Swerve or Truvia or any other granular low glycemic sweetener.

My dark chocolate of choice is President’s Choice Organic dark (85% cacao) bars available from Loblaws (Superstore). They are really dark but still have a creamy mouth feel and I don’t find them bitter at all.

Happy Birthday to me 🙂

Keto Dark Chocolate Flourless Cake

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: Ketogenic, LCHF, Low Carb

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 45 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour

Servings: 8

Author: Mia Staysko

A classic decadent and rich chocolate cake, made low carb by simply choosing your sweetener carefully and using the darkest, best quality chocolate you can find.

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Ingredients

• 200 g dark chocolate 85% cacao
• 100 g butter cubed
• 100 ml heavy cream 32-35%
• 4 tbsp monkfruit sweetener
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract best quality
• 4 large eggs separated, at room temp
• pinch salt or cream of tartar
• 3/4 tsp instant espresso powder optional

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 325°

2. Prepare a 7 or 8” spring form pan by lining with buttered parchment (I think you could just butter it if you didn’t have parchment – I used a 7″ pan so it would be a bit taller – and that’s what I have LOL)

3. Melt dark chocolate with butter over a double boiler or in short bursts in the microwave, stirring often. Mix in instant espresso powder.

4. Beat the egg yolks, cream, vanilla and sweetener together and then beat into the chocolate mixture. It may separate, if it does just mix well with a beater to smooth it out. Add espresso powder and vanilla.

5. With a very clean bowl and mixer beat the egg whites with a small pinch of salt or cream of tartar until stiff peaks form. Fold whites carefully into the chocolate mixture in three even additions.

6. Pour into prepared pan, smooth very lightly and bake at 325° for about 45 minutes. The cake will not quite set (a toothpick would NOT come out clean!) It will still be a bit jiggly in the center but should look drier on the edges.

7. Cool and then chill for about 3 or 4 hours. Cut with a hot, sharp knife.

8. Dust with a light sprinkle of powdered erythritol or Swerve and serve with a few nice fresh berries.

9. Cover lightly once cooled and store in the refrigerator.

Recipe Notes

I think this cake is even better the next day! A dollop of creme fraise or whipped cream and a raspberry or two is divine!