Gluten free chocolate joy - Queen of Sheba cake, Reine de Saba

So chocolate lovers, this cake is for you.
Intense chocolate flavour
in a gluten free cake and a brilliant name. Give it a go

You may have noticed that there isn't a lot of flour on the shelves in many supermarkets. Is everyone baking? Since I'm not walking around the whole area I can't smell the results, and there's no biscuits baking smell wafting over from the McVities factory at the moment either.

I finally got some flour actually, at the Co-op in Cricklewood, thank you Co-op. And I got a bar of basic dark chocolate (43% for those who want detail). And it's my lovely daughter's birthday.. and she loves chocolate. At the same time I found a recipe in Elizabeth David was being shared by a BBC London Radio listener on facebook and since it's called the Queen of Sheba and my daughter is a special person, definitely got some regal stuff going on, I decided to give it a go.

Queen of Sheba cake

Ingredients

the cake dusted
with icing sugar

125g butter

125g sugar

125g dark chocolate

100 g ground almonds 

3 eggs, separated
1 tbsp coffee and spirit if you like

Set your oven to 160C

Method

• separate the eggs, into yolks and whites 
• melt chocolate (in bain marie, microwave or oven)
• add butter to melted chocolate, beating it until smooth
• add in the egg yolks one by one, beating to combine, following with the sugar and ground almonds, beating until everything is properly combined
• whip the egg whites until they form soft peaks
• fold the fluffy egg whites through the chocolate mixture, in cutting motions to keep as much air as possible
• pour mixture into prepared 8"/20cm lined tin
• bake for 45m

allow to cool before removing from the tin - be careful, it's fragile cake, dust with cocoa or icing sugar to servev.

You need a strong arm or an electric whisk or equivalent. I use an old fashioned hand held electric whisk. I don't have a big machine, just a lot of bowls. I realised that I would need a gadget garage to fit one in the kitchen, or it would have to sit on the side and I don't find it very attractive, so I got the hand held whisk. There's no flour or baking powder, the raising agent is beaten egg whites. 

20cm tin prepped
with butter and cocoa

melt the chocolate

stir the butter into the melted chocolate
 then stir in the yolks, sugar and ground almonds

beat together and leave to cool

whisk the egg whites
until they make soft peaks

stir the whites through the chocolate
mixture until combined

you can see a bit of unstirred
egg white