Exploring in chocolate
Tuesday January 25th 2022, 10:49 pm
Filed under: Food

Chocolate almond torte cupcakes, I’d call them. Chocolate teacakes to them. Celiac friendly. Not overly sweet.

Those of us who bake are familiar with the instructions to separate eggs and beat the whites at the last till they’re nice and frothy, put a little of them into the rest of the mixed ingredients, and fold the rest in carefully so you don’t smush the air out and then get that thing in the oven just as fast as you can.

What I had never encountered before were the instructions to do so–and then leave the whole thing alone for an hour and not only that but before you spoon it out into the pan.

Ottolenghi said, Trust us. Don’t skip this step–you need the almond flour to soak in the moisture of the other ingredients for the sake of the texture of the cupcakes to come.

(I used cocoa and boiling water for the instant coffee granules and boiling water called for because I’m Mormon like that.)

And they were right. I was surprised at what a difference it made, and wondered why it hadn’t said this on their other almond flour-based recipe I’d tried earlier.

It said it made 18. Who has an 18-muffin pan? The classic metal 12-pan took 24 minutes and the silicone 6-pan was quite done in 20. Curious.


2 Comments so far
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This recipe suggestion to “let it sit”-although usually only for 10 minutes- is common in Passover recipes-also to let the moisture sink into the dense ‘flour’ mixture. I make a lot of muffins for school lunches these days and find it is almost always about 18, a little more, a little less. I use small 12 muffin tins and line them with silicon wrappers. They end up being about the same size at the end…but yes, never exactly 18, sometimes 20 and sometimes 16. Go figure.

Comment by Joanne 01.26.22 @ 9:30 am

Sourdough bread sponge raising right now.

Comment by Sharon Stanger 01.28.22 @ 11:27 am



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