Flourless Chocolate Mini Rose Cake

Too much baking, too little time.  It's always true, but even more so right now.  I don't know if it's spring fever or spring break baking-hangover.  But I had a list of four things (three of them yeast breads) that I wanted to bake today, along with getting homework and errands done.  Needless to say, I had to cut back on that one.

And now I'm out of oatmeal, plain Greek yogurt and almost out of both flour and wheat flour.  So, I guess that ends my baking spree.

Some baking I did have time for last week was a mini cake for HFK!

These are my new mini 4 inch springform pans.  I am kind of excited about them.  I have these great visions of spending (the non-studying portion of) my summer revising cake recipes to make tiny little cakes that NES and I can eat and not have to eat for weeks.  {Speaking of cakes, there are still two pieces of green cheesecake in our fridge.}  Whether that happens or not remains to be seen.

But regardless, they made a perfect tiny little (gluten-free) cake for HFK!

I happened to find a recipe for 6 flourless chocolate cupcakes.  I figured it was worth a try in my tiny pans, and it totally worked!  The recipe made two perfect little 4 inch layers.

Did I mention it was super easy, too?

It was a deep, dark chocolate cake, though, and I decided it needed something light to counteract all that chocolate.  So, for frosting (even though I'm totally not a whipped cream frosting person in 99.9% of cases), I decided on whipped cream.  And since I wasn't seeing HFK right that minute, I needed it to stay for a while.  So I tried out stabilized whipped cream for the first time.

It was still in place some 5-6 hours later, so I'd call that a success.

For some reason, the stabilized whipped cream made me think rose frosting.  I had seen it once upon a time on Pinterest, and decided it was beautiful.  And for some reason, I decided to try that for the first time with the unknown stabilized whipped cream.

I must say, however, it was definitely a success!  Thankfully, the whipped cream was actually very forgiving and looked wonderful in the rose shape.

It's literally just a matter of using a star tip to make a spiral, starting at the center, then filling any open spaces with a star.  With a little practice, and forgiving medium, I felt like a pro in no time.  Ask me about that when I frost a big cake with actual frosting though.  I'll probably be back at square one.

The edges weren't quite as pretty, but I was trying to frost it on a lipped paper plate.  I think that counts as a good excuse.

And I used almost all the whipped cream on the cake.  It ended up being a lot of whipped cream.  HFK said she had to dig for the cake a little.  But I guess that's what I get for trying to cover a crumbly chocolate cake in white, white whipped cream!



Flourless Chocolate Cake 
from Up Close with Saumya

4 oz. semisweet chocolate (I used chocolate chips)
4 tbsp. unsalted butter
2 eggs
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 tbsp. sugar (or more if you'd like it sweeter)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Melt the chocolate chips and butter together in a double boiler or the microwave.  If you're using the microwave, check it frequently and don't let it burn.

Mix the cocoa, eggs and sugar together in a separate bowl.

Add a little of the warm chocolate and butter mixture into the egg and cocoa mixture to ensure the eggs don't cook.  Mix well.  Add the remaining chocolate and stir to combine.

Pour into 2 greased 4-inch cake pans or 6 lined muffin tins.

Bake 15-30 minutes (shorter for cupcakes, longer for cake pans), or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out mostly clean.

Cool before frosting, or top with powdered sugar.


Stabilized Whipped Cream
adapted slightly from The Italian Dish

1 tsp. unflavored gelatin
4 tsp. cold water
1 cup heavy whipping cream
2-4 tbsp. powdered sugar

In the smallest pan you can find, combine the gelatin and cold water.  Allow to stand until thick.

Stir over low heat until the gelatin dissolves.

Remove from heat, and allow to cool, but not set.

Beat the whipped cream and sugar until slightly thick.  While beating on low, add the gelatin.

Beat at high speed until desired whipped cream consistency.

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