Sunday we went to Maine to celebrate Father’s Day with relatives. I didn’t need any more of an excuse to start baking. I’d already had this cake recipe in my head and couldn’t wait to try it out.

The body of the cake is made with just almond flour, making it gluten and grain-free and lending a slightly nutty flavor. Because almond flour isn’t all that absorbent, the cake comes out slightly dense and fudgy. I don’t know about you, but those are two adjectives I like to describe my cakes. The cake isn’t all that sweet, though, so the glaze adds that final punch of flavor that makes it a show stopper. This cake recipe will become my standard for frosted and layer cakes.

Dark Chocolate Almond Meal Cake

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups finely ground almond meal
• 3/4 cup cane sugar
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3oz unsweetened chocolate
• 1/4 cup neutral oil
• 4 eggs
• 2 egg whites
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Sift together the almond meal, sugar, cocoa powder, salt, and baking soda. Whisk in the eggs, oil, vanilla extract, and egg whites completely.

Melt the chocolate in a microwave or over a double boiler and fold that into the cake batter until it’s completely emulsified. Pour the cake into a cake pan and bake for about 25 minutes or until the center has set. Remove from the oven and let cool.

This is a great gluten-free cake on its own, but it’s not incredibly sweet nor does it have much else going for it. This cake really begs for a frosting or a glaze of some sort, and what goes better with chocolate than peanut butter?

Peanut Butter Glaze

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup natural peanut butter
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1/3 cup maple syrup
• Water to thin

Scoop the peanut butter into a large bowl. Slowly sift in the powdered sugar, mixing it in little by little. When the sugar is completely incorporated, pour in the maple syrup and stir. Slowly incorporate water until the frosting reaches a glaze-like consistency. Pour the glaze over the cake and level out.

I decorated mine with Trader Joe’s miniature peanut butter cups and cut it up into 14 slices. I couldn’t believe how well this turned out on the first try. The cake is somewhere between cakey and fudgy, which isn’t and easy balance to strike with gluten-free flours. And the peanut butter glaze doesn’t over power the rich chocolate in the cake.

I’ve set a goal to only have one slice a day. So far that’s not going so well.

I’ve baked more in the past few days than I had all Summer. I love baking but usually I can’t(or rather shouldn’t) eat a whole batch of sweets by myself, so as soon as I get a chance to bake for others I jump at it. Here’s a sneak peak at what’s come out of my oven lately:

9am is too early for cake, right? Just checking.

And last but not least:

Almond cookies. I looked all over for these one night and couldn’t find them anywhere. I threw in the towel and decided to bake them, which couldn’t have been easier. The secret to getting a crisp, biscuit-like texture to these is using regular and superfine sugar to create hard shell on the outside. And since you don’t need to whip the egg whites at all, it’s simple enough for a beginning baker to do!

Amaretti Biscuit Cookies

Ingredients:

• 2 cups almond flour
• 2 egg whites
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup cane sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons almond extract

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees. Line a baking tray with parchment paper.

Beat together the egg whites, almond flour, both sugars and extract until the dough is unified and sticky.

Shape the dough into 1-inch balls and place them on the baking tray. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the outside is hard and golden.

Serve with a cup of tea, coffee, milk, or almond milk. Since they’re crispy cookies, they’re perfect for dunking to get them soft and crumbly. If you want to spike your milk with amaretto, I won’t judge.

Can you have such a thing as too much dessert?

How can you have thick and creamy chocolate mousse with just chocolate and water? It seems impossible. But as soon as I stumbled on this blog post making exactly that I had a hunch I would make it and love it. It’s a little difficult technically but completely worth the end result. Following through with all of the prep work makes the active part easier.

This is one of those recipes where you’ll want to use good chocolate. You know, the Ina-Garten-only-uses-good chocolate. Since the recipe is primarily chocolate and water, all the flavor comes from the chocolate. You certainly don’t want to make this with chocolate chips. I used Callebaut baking chocolate and it came out fine. If I were making this to really impress someone(say for a Valentine’s Day dessert) I would use Vahlrona.

Chocolate Mousse With Kahlua(a variation on this recipe)

Ingredients(Makes 3-4 servings):

• 265 grams good quality bittersweet chocolate
• 1 cup minus 2 Tablespoons warm water
• 2 Tablespoons Kahlua
• 3 Tablespoons cane sugar
• 2 Tablespoons cocoa powder*

*I added this at the very end to help thicken the mousse up. I might have needed it because water from the ice bath slipped into the chocolate bowl. If as it’s cooled the chocolate mousse doesn’t seem thick enough, add this in. Otherwise the recipe is fine without it.

Additional notes:

• Watch this video before starting for an actual portrayal of how the chocolate should look after each step.
• Since the proportions are very important for this recipe, it’s best to weigh all the ingredients out on a kitchen scale before starting including the liquids.
• Use a large plastic bowl with a wide bottom when whisking the emulsion so that the chocolate is shallow and will cool down faster.

Start by measuring out and mixing together the water, Kahlua, and sugar.

In a double-boiler or microwave safe bowl, melt the chocolate down completely.

Prepare an ice bath in a larger bowl for the chocolate and move the melted chocolate to a bowl in the center of the ice bath.

In the ice bath, whisk together the chocolate and alcohol mixture. Continue mixing softly and smoothly for 5-10 minutes as the chocolate cools to keep the mousse emulsified as it cools.

If after a while the chocolate mixture is still rather thin, add in the 2 extra tablespoons of cocoa powder and whisk them in making sure not to leave any clumps.

Once the mousse has come together, spoon it in to servings bowls. Refrigerate for an hour before serving.

It’s hard to imagine something so creamy being made with only chocolate and water. This makes for an easy recipe to pull out and impress with on special occasions; I’ll definitely be committing it to memory.