Flourless Easter Chocolate and Almond Cake

Although I am not exactly a great fan of marzipan and ground almonds, I find that they make cakes very moist, which is delicious. This cake is wonderful served with cream, creme fraiche or ice cream, and the icing is fantastic. I got the recipe from one of Dan Lepard's articles. I might warn you that it does make a huge, albeit rather flat, cake so for everyday cake baking halving the quantities is probably advisable. For those of you who like a darker chocolate flavour, or if the milk chocolate you have isn't very dark, try replacing some of the milk chocolate with dark, as I did when making the cake in the photo. Oh, and another thing - the quantities for the ganache do make rather a lot, and I was left, even after a thick covering of icing, with some excess, so perhaps 150-200g of each ingredient would be more appropriate.

Method:

For the cake:

1. Line a 30cm/12in cake time with greaseproof paper

2. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius

3.Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy

4. Slowly, while still stirring, add the ground almonds to the mixture

5. Gradually beat in the eggs

6. Melt the chocolate and gently add that to the mixture

7. Pour into a cake tin, level the mixture and bake for 50-60 mins, until firm and baked through

8. Allow to cool and turn the cake out

For the ganache topping:

1. Place the chocolate in a large bowl

2. Heat the cream until nearly boiling

3. Remove the cream from the heat and pour over chocolate to melt it

4. Whisk until smooth 

5. Allow the ganache to cool slightly, before pouring over the cake, starting in the middle and working outwards

6. Allow to set slightly and then decorate with mini chocolate eggs