Fallen bitters

Today I want to talk about the loving memory of a chocolate cake I made the other day.

I first read about it on Thalia Ho's blog - butter and brioche - and fell in love with the name and ingredients, the swoon-worthy decadence of it all: Fallen Bitter Chocolate Orange Cake".

Doesn't that name just set off all the right alarm bells? I used the most luxurious chocolate I had on hand from Callebaut (the same people who supply the chocolate for magnum ice cream) - it's really beautiful chocolate. It's smooth and creamy with the faintest hint of bitter cocoa, and it's not mind-numbingly sweet.

Then I melted it in a bowl over a gently simmering pot of water with cubes of unsalted butter and watched as the mixture became ever-so glossy, and added in orange zest which added liveliness and intensity to the flavour, and salt.

My brother's been making Gunner cocktails (ginger ale, lime cordial, a dash of angostura bitters) which are so crisp and refreshing on a hot day, but anyway, we were lucky enough to have a bottle of bitters around. So I added a teaspoon to the chocolate and that gave it heat and the faintest boozy aftertaste.

Then it was whipped egg yolks and sugar, a scattering of almond meal, and right at the end, I folded in a delicate meringue. I was afraid of deflating the meringue, so didn't incorporate it enough, but as it turned out, after a day or so in the fridge, the cake was wonderful.

The base and top were lightly crunchy in the way of caramelised sugar, the almond meal gave a smoky nuttiness to the cake, the chocolate was rich and smooth in the way of a chocolate truffle, and exploding with flavour of the orange. Bitter-sweet and decadent. Quite quite amazing.