A White Chocolate Cake

If I asked you what your favourite cake was, what would you answer? Mine would be this cake.

I was asked to make a gluten-free cake for my younger sister’s birthday this weekend, and I instantly thought of a white chocolate cake; I have wanted to make this ever since I saw the recipe on Arla’s site. The reason behind my instant infatuation was the fact that the cake base was made out of marzipan and I have been so sure that it would work well as a gluten-free cake base - it did.

Trust me on this.

The base consists of marzipan, cocoa powder and eggs, all of these ingredients make for a cake that is incredibly succulent, soft and chewy - I really can not praise this base enough. I promise you that you will not feel sorry about the fact that you can not eat gluten when eating this cake, unless you absolutely hate marzipan, but that is a different story.

White chocolate is the main ingredient in the filling, giving just enough sweetness to the cake without being overpowering. Whipped cream makes the filling lighter and yolks add some of that round, full flavour humans seem to crave in their food.

Please, feel free to adjust the recipe, use dark chocolate for example, if you do not feel like eating white chocolate.

I used some passion fruit on top of the cake, but I think some other kind of fruit or berries would work better, maybe strawberries would be the best choice? Passion fruit is also not the prettiest decoration for a cake in my opinion, although it did sparkle nicely in the candlelight; a quality the Libra birthday girl appreciated.

The recipe is easy to follow.

A gluten-free white chocolate cake recipe

Recipe originally from Arla

serves 8, takes approximately 30 minutes to make, and has to be frozen overnight (or at least for 4 hours)

The cake base

-300 grams or 10,5 ounces marzipan

-2 tbls cocoa powder

-2 eggs

The filling

-200 grams or 7 ounces white chocolate (this needs to be good quality made with cocoa butter, if possible)

-1 lemon, the zest and 2 tbls of the juice

-3 dl or 1,2 cups whipping cream

-2 egg yolks

For the topping and decoration

The original recipe says to use 3 passion fruits, but I think some berries for example would work better. Also, some pureed mango would probably be good too.

Heat your oven to 175 C or 350 F.

Line a springform pan with some baking paper; mine was 22 cm in diameter. Grease the paper with butter.

Place the marzipan, eggs and cocoa powder into a bowl or food processor and mix until smooth.

Pour the batter into the pan and make sure it is even.

Bake the cake at the lowest level in your oven for 20 minutes. Then let it cool and remove from the pan. Wash the pan and place the cooled cake base back into it.

Start making the filling after you have put the cake into the oven.

Chop the chocolate and place it into a bain-marie (or a microwave oven) so that it melts. This is my version of a bain-marie, I can never be bothered to take a bowl and place it on top of a saucepan, so I use a regular deep plate.  Place the saucepan on medium heat and make sure that the plate does not touch the water, stir the chocolate every once in a while and you should have no problems.

As for microwaves; I do not have one and do not want one, they are the devil’s work because they make food taste so bad. Some claim that they can not taste the microwave, but I don’t believe them.

Wash the lemon well, take the zest and 2 tbls of lemon juice and set aside.

Whip the cream and set aside.

Separate the egg yolks and whip them.

Add the lemon zest and juice to the egg yolks.

Whisk the melted white chocolate into the egg yolk mixture.

Separate the whipped cream into three equal portions and whip them into the mixture one by one.

Pour the mixture on top of the cake base into the pan and make sure that it is even.

Wrap the pan in some plastic wrap and then some foil; the foil is important since it prevents any freezing damage from happening.

Place the cake into a freezer and let it freeze overnight (or at least for four hours). Take the cake into room temperature 30 minutes before serving and place the fruit or berries on top of it.

Christmas is coming closer, although it seems far away, and me being the Christmas nutter that I am, I have already started to prepare.

I love everything about Christmas.

In my family Christmas is a big deal, much to my pleasure, and I am going to be the one in charge of the desserts; they have to be gluten-free, tasty and easy to make. I have decided to try some recipes in advance and so, if everything goes according to plan, I will blog about mostly desserts at the moment.

Popularity: 10% [?]