As someone who always loves a good flourless chocolate cake I was excited to try this week’s Heavenly Cake Baker recipe, Baby Chocolate Oblivions. The recipe called for the cakes to be baked in silicone cupcake pans, so I decided to use silicone rose pans about the same size and was thrilled with how they turned out. I ended up improvising for some of the baking directions because I don’t have a parve roasting pan or turkey baster (shocking, I know). It certainly did not make sense to buy them just for this recipe, since I do not envision I will be doing a lot of parve roasting in the future, so I just made due with what I had. The cakes turned out just fine in spite of the changes. I placed the 6 cup mold (for half a recipe) in a 9 x 13 baking pan without a rack (because my rack was too big) and poured the water for the water bath in there. I made a foil pan to place on top during baking, and when the cakes were done I carefully lifted the pan out of the water bath and placed it on the rack. I was worried they would break from all the shifting, but the cakes seemed to hold together just fine.

The cake was delicious. It had a dense creamy texture that was like a cross between a cake and a truffle. I served it with a simple raspberry sauce to offset the richness. The cake reminded me of the cake that my family used to get for every birthday. A co-worker of my mom’s use to sell a similar flourless chocolate truffle cake and we would order them for every birthday and celebration. We called it “Nancy’s cake” and would savor it in small slices. In retrospect it might be a bit strange that I requested this cake as an eight year old instead of something with piles of brightly colored buttercream, but it was my absolute favorite. Unfortunately Nancy moved away after only a few years, taking her recipe with her and leaving us to fend for ourselves when it came to birthday cakes. I have made many flourless chocolate cakes over the years (it wouldn’t be Passover without them) and this cake comes closest to that creamy texture I remember loving about Nancy’s cakes. The cake has only four ingredients, chocolate, sugar, eggs and butter (for which I substituted margarine) so it is critical to use good quality chocolate for this recipe.

My only complaint about this recipe is that it is so rich the individual cakes were too big for a single serving. I served them to a group of great dessert eaters, the kind of people who don’t turn down a rich dessert, especially one made of chocolate, and most people couldn’t finish much more than half. I might try making them in mini muffin tins next time, or as a larger cake that I could cut smaller servings from.