Hole-y Mouth Batman! Flourless Chocolate Cake

For those of you who know me well, you know I buy my baking supplies in bulk.  Costco is a wonderful land where I can buy 4 lb packages of butter, 7 lb bags of powdered sugar, and 25 lb bags of flour without shame because hotpants in the next checkout aisle over has a 3 gallon jar of mayo and a lifetime supply of cheesy poofs. Now stop looking at me like that over the 25 lb bag of flour. I use it in everything I bake, and I've gone through about half of the bag in the last month.  Flourless cake you say?  Well shit...

Like I mentioned in my last post I had some awesometastic oral surgery last week that has left me with the chewing capabilities of an infant for the past 7 days.  In honor of that I gave myself free reign to eat as much ooey gooey awesomenss asI could before my good excuse was gone.  One of the things that I decided to make was a flourless chocolate cake.  All I have to say is O-M-G.

Once you've greased, floured, and lined a 6in round pan with parchment paper, place a cake pan filled halfway with water into a 325 degree oven.

Step 1: Melt 1/2 c semi-sweet chocolate with 6 tbsp butter in the microwave in 30 second intervals.  You set that aside and let it cool slightly while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

Step 2: Beat 3 egg yolks (reserve whites) with 1 1/2 c sugar, 1/2 c cocoa powder and 1 tsp vanilla.  It will be a thick mess, but it gets better.  Add the slightly cooled chocolate-butter mix to the egg yolk mixture and stir until combined. 

Step 3: Remember those egg whites you saved?  (If you forgot, pretend you remembered and have your boyfriend distract any bystanders as you crack 3 more eggs, throw away the yolks and magically produce the whites in a bowl.)  Beat the eggs until soft peaks form.  They should look something like this:

Step 4: Fold (do not stir!!!) your egg whites into the chocolate mixture 1/3 at a time.  Be gentle here people!  The egg whites are what's going to give your cake some height.  Stir too hard and you'll end up with chocolate flavored shoe leather.  It's OK if there are a few white streaks here and there throughout the batter.  You're really just looking for it to be evenly mixed.

Step 5: Spoon the batter gently into the prepared 6 in round pan and place in the pan of hot water in the preheated oven. 

Bake for 45-55 min, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Let the cake cool for 15 minutes in the pan on a cooling rack (or on top of your stove if hopped up on pain meds and you're too lazy to pull out a cooling rack just yet).  After 15 minutes, gently run a knife along the edge of the pan to release any sticky bits, and then turn onto a cooling rack (and yes, your lazy butt does actually have to get a cooling rack now).

Now the recipe tells you to let it cool completely and then serve.  I say screw the directions.  This sucker tastes like a warm ooey gooey brownie when it's fresh out of the oven like this.  So you have my blessing to cut it up and dig right in!

Perhaps with some fudge sauce?

*Drool*