Diabolo
The first two entries in the great French-style chocolate cake search, G¢teau au Chocolat and Bête Noire, are room temperature cakes, best eaten within several hours of baking. For this week, we test a cake that is served cold, with either an adornment of whipped cream on top, or plain with the whipped cream in a bowl on the side.
Diablo is from Cocolat by Alice Medrich, an excellent compendium of chocolate tortes and desserts with a range of beautiful finishing techniques. Medrich frosts the entire Diablo with whipped cream, and places two-toned chocolate fans on top. It’s a distinctive look but with a high difficulty level.
Frosting a cake with whipped cream is very challenging as the whipped cream tends to get grainy as it is spread around the cake. Chocolate fans have challenges of their own so I developed a simpler way of finishing the cake with the same ingredients.
In my version below, the whipped cream is piped on top of the cake with star tip, and chocolate shavings, much simpler than fans, are strewn over the top. The shavings can be replaced with a light dusting of cocoa.
The beauty of Diablo is that it can be kept in the refrigerator for one or two days, then pulled out at the last minute and decorated, freeing up time on the day of a dinner party.
Diablo
| Yield: 1 cake | # of Servings: 8 to10 |
Ingredients
Cake:
6 oz (170 g) 56% to 64% chocolate, wafers or chopped into small pieces
12 tbl (6 oz (170 g) unsalted butter, room temperature
4 large egg yolks
½ cup (3.6 oz / 103 g) sugar
¼ tsp vanilla extract
½ cup (1.65 oz / 47 g) almond flour
¼ cup (1.15 oz / 33 g) all-purpose flour
4 large egg whites
Pinch of salt
¼ cup (1.8 oz / 51g) sugar
Whipped Cream:
1 ½ cups heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbl (.8 oz / 23 g) confectioner’s sugar, sifted
Finishing:
Chocolate shavings, as needed
Special tools and equipment needed:
- 8†by 2†cake pan, or 8†by 3†springform pan
- Handheld or countertop mixer with whisk attachment
- Sauce pan for double boiler
Pre-recipe preparations:
- Preheat oven to 375 °F
- Butter the cake or springform pan, line with a parchment paper circle, and butter the parchment paper.
Directions
- Place chocolate and butter in a medium-size mixing bowl over barely simmering water. When chocolate and butter are almost completely melted, remove from heat, let sit for a minute, then whisk until smooth. Set aside.
- In machine bowl using wire whip or in mixing bowl using handheld mixer, whip egg yolks with sugar and vanilla extract until thick and pale yellow.
- Mix in chocolate mixture, ground almonds, and flour.
- In machine bowl using wire whip, beat egg whites with salt until soft peaks. Slowly add the sugar and beat just until medium stiff meringue. Do not overbeat.
- Mix in â…“ of the egg whites into the chocolate batter to lighten, stirring up from the bottom of the bowl. Gently fold in remaining whites just until no white streaks remain.
- Bake at 375 °F for 5 minutes, reduce to 350 °F and bake for an additional 23 to 25 minutes, for a total baking time of 28 to 30 minutes. The cake should just have just formed a center crown. A tester inserted into the center of the cake should come out with a bit of chocolate batter on it1.
- Remove from oven and place on a cooling rack.
- If cake is in 8†by 2†cake pan, let cool for 10 minutes. Place an 8†cardboard cake circle or another cooling rack on top of the cake pan and invert. Peel the parchment circle off bottom of cake, then invert again onto a cooling rack. The cake should now be right-side up. Let cool to room temperature.
- If cake is in a springform pan, let cool for 10 minutes, then remove the sides. Let cool to room temperature. Invert the cake onto an 8†cake circle or cooling rack, peel the parchment paper off the bottom then invert again onto serving plate. Cool to room temperature.
- The cake will sink slightly in the center as it cools.
- Wrap well with plastic film and place in refrigerator for several hours or up to 2 days. Cake may also be frozen for up to 1 month.
Finishing and serving:
- Remove cake from fridge and unwrap.
- Method 1: Dust cake lightly with confectioners’ sugar, and place on a serving plate. Serve with a large bowl of softly whipped cream on the side.
- Method 2: Whip cream until just stiff. With a plastic pastry bag and a #5 star tip, pipe whipped cream over the top of the cake using a pattern of your choice.
- To make chocolate shavings, scrape (carefully) an 8-inch chef’s knife along a large piece of chocolate toward you at a 45 ° angle. The blocks of chocolate from Trader Joe’s are perfect for this. Alternatively, for smaller shavings use a vegetable peeler on the edge.
Notes:
1 This cake is baked slightly more underdone than other French-style chocolate cakes
