How to mix chocolate into flourless ground almond cake?

How to mix chocolate into flourless ground almond cake? - Brown Wooden Coffee Bean Grinder and Two Muffins

TL;DR: When should I add melted chocolate to a ground almond cake recipe?

Needing a gluten free recipe for cake, I have been using the following ground almond cake recipe as a base for my cakes:

Ingredients:

  • 6 eggs
  • 200g ground almonds
  • 50g sugar

Method:

  1. Whisk eggs and sugar on high speed until fluffy (~10 mins)
  2. Fold in the ground almonds in 2 or 3 batches until combined
  3. Bake in a greased, spring-form pan for 25 mins at 180c in a pre-heated oven, or until a skewer comes out clean

Note:

To make this a chocolate cake, 50g cocoa is added during the whisking.

Question:

I recently tried adding 75g melted and cooled callebaut ruby rb1 chocolate into the (stage 1) whisking process, hoping that I would still get the fluffy eggs. I did not. The eggs stayed very liquid. I expect adding melted chocolate to the folding stage 2 would produce the same result (though I don't have the ingredients to test this right now.)

Can anyone suggest when the appropriate time in this recipe would be to add melted chocolate? I ask because I cannot get ruby cocoa and being able to combine melted chocolate would (I hope) open the door to being able to combine many other ingredients (and, thus, produce many other variations on this cake.)



Best Answer

The typical way for this kind of recipe is to fold the melted chocolate into the beaten eggs. Make sure you are really folding it, not stirring vigorously or beating with a mixer, to ensure minimal loss of volume. When the chocolate is semi-incorporated, continue adding the almond flour in batches.

The resulting cake will be denser and less dry, but that is normal for chocolate cake.

open the door to being able to combine many other ingredients (and, thus, produce many other variations on this cake.)

I am afraid it doesn't work that way. What you propose are not some kind of minor variations (those would be e.g. adding a few drops of aroma, or a food coloring, or baking it square instead of round). If you start adding main ingredients, you will not only get a very different texture, you will have to change the rest of the process too - basically, you would have to create different recipes. Not impossible, but it is a huge amount of work, and it is much easier to just use existing recipes.

For example, the addition method I described above is specific to melted chocolate. If you wanted to add, say, sour cream, or a fruit puree, you would have to interleave it with adding the flour, and start with flour - so 1/3 flour, 1/3 puree, 1/3 flour, etc. But the almond flour is also not absorbent enough, so you would have to experiment with different flour combinations until you get something that works well, and you like the taste. You can do that of course, but the more pragmatical way is to just follow an existing recipe, instead of creating a new one out of nothing, when you are not an experienced baker already.




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How to mix chocolate into flourless ground almond cake? - Piece of pink cake with meringues and macaron
How to mix chocolate into flourless ground almond cake? - Brown Wooden Coffee Bean Grinder and Two Muffins
How to mix chocolate into flourless ground almond cake? - Piece of pink cake with meringues and macaron



Does chocolate and almond go together?

Chocolate and almonds work well together supposedly because they have several flavor compounds in common.

What does ground almond do in baking?

Ground almonds are flavoured and lubricated by nut oils, have coarser particles and do not contain gluten. This means that you cannot simply replace 225 of flour with 225g of ground almonds in a recipe and achieve comparable results. Bakes made with ground almonds will be denser, moister, crumblier and browner.

What does almond flour do to cake?

Almond flour adds texture and flavor, and is well-loved by those following a paleo diet. It can be used in pie crusts, cakes, cookies, pancakes, and breads. In addition, it can also be integrated into a variety of savory dishes, like in meatballs (instead of bread crumbs) as well as a coating for fish and chicken.

Can ground almonds replace flour?

We would caution slightly at trying to use all almond meal (ground almonds) as a substitute for flour in a recipe. Firstly almond meal doesn't contain any gluten and gluten is the stretchy protein in flour that helps to bind items like cookies together.



Torta Caprese - Flourless Chocolate Almond Cake




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