La Bete Noire - flourless chocolate cake with hazelnut coconut icing

So as it's father's day today I decided to bake my dad a cake. He loves chocolate and I decided I didn't want to make the usual mud cake. Upon reading about La Bete Noire, I knew I had to give it a shot. I had however been considering a German chocolate cake, so I decided to improvise and use the icing from the german cake recipe on top of The Black Beast.

As soon as I read that it was being cooked in a water bath I knew I was up with the old challenge of sealing the Springform tin. I had already unsuccessfully sealed it once when I made the Zebra cheesecake. So this time I used masking tape to seal the edges that didn't reach the top of the pan and used 2 or 3 extra layers of foil.

You would have thought that this would have been enough, right? WRONG. It still managed to seep in. I think it's about time I invested in a roll of heavy duty, extra wide foil. Nonetheless, on to the recipe.


La Bete Noire

I used Nestle Club dark chocolate. My springform tin was actually 8 inches rather than 10 but didn't check this until after I took the cake out of the oven. The cake turned out quite moist and I believe it's both due to the leaky tin as well as the fact that it could have done with a bit more time in the oven due to increased cake depth, say 10 more minutes. However, chilling the cake in the fridge for 2+ hours prior to serving creates a to-die-for fudgy texture.

Not very pretty is it? I guess it is a beast..


German chocolate cake icing
My version:
42 g unsalted butter
1/4 cup caster sugar
1/8 cup brown sugar
1 large egg yolk, lightly beaten with a fork
Just over 1/3 cup evaporated milk
Dash of vanilla essence
1/3 cup toasted, chopped hazelnuts or any other nut (pop in the oven for about 10 mins, mixing once)
50g dessicated coconut

1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over a low heat.
2. Whisk the sugar and egg yolks together off heat in a small bowl, then add to the butter in saucepan, followed by the evaporated milk.
3. Cook mixture over low to medium low heat, stirring constantly, for 10-12 minutes (mine took 12 minutes over low heat) or until the mixture thinly coats the spoon
4. Pour this mixture through a strainer into a clean bowl.
5. Stir in the vanilla.
6. Lay a small piece of parchment paper over the top as you would if you were cooling pudding, and let cool at room temperature for about 40 minutes.

7. Stir in the coconut and hazelnuts and transfer to refrigerator to chill and thicken.
8. Remove from fridge and leave to warm slightly before spreading onto the cold cake.

Voila!

And boy was this rich! Almost passed out after eating this slice. It was still edible despite it's soggyness thank goodness. Will warm it up and have it with a scoop of ice cream next time (tomorrow).

Happy Fathers Day!

Next up: a recipe to utilise the rest of the can of evaporated milk.

UPDATE: I tried this the following day and it is so much better after refrigeration! The texture is much more fudgy - closer to what I had imagined. Delish.