Flourless Chocolate Cake Chili

Er.. that is... Flourless Chocolate Chili Cake! Oh how the order of words can change things!

We had a THROWDOWN* at my second life** today.
A week or so ago, Helen brought in - and had practically anyone she could find who might appreciate it try it - Chili Chocolate. A dark chocolate with a rather spicy kick. It was tasty! A few days later, I came across this recipie for Chipotle Flourless Chocolate Cake - so I sent Helen the link, planning to make it for her if she responded in a positive manner. She did - and forwarded it on to Leslie, who jumped up and said she'd make it - to which I said I was going to make it, in a huffy huff. So, we decide to have a THROWDOWN. Each making it but with our own twist - she didn't want to do Chipotle because of the smokeyness, and I wanted to do.. something, I wasn't sure. Then in comes Helen again, who insists she will make the original recipie. And there it was. The THROWDOWN was planned for today - Monday.

So, wanting of course to win, because I'm competitive as hell like that, I made a practice batch this weekend. First - I purchased three different kinds of dried chilies from the local Mexican market. They had a wall of chilies, lots of chilies.. all air-tightly packed, so my plan to purchase based on smell fell apart rather quickly. So I purchased Ancho (because everything I read about chili and chocolate talked about ancho), Puya (it looked spicy), and Cascabel (it looked different).

Taking these home, I immediately ripped into the bags, and started to chop the chilies up.


Being scientific, I decided to do a taste test. I chopped the chilies up seeds separate from flesh - since I figured the seeds would be spicy, and the flesh flavorful. I then mixed each of the 6 powders into a ganache and let them sit.

Then, Dan and i went through them all, tasting.
I tasted nothing. NOTHING! It was a waste of time! YAR! Not sure why I couldn't taste the chili at all. Wierd.
The spices by themselves offered a good idea as to whether I wanted them in chocolate, though. The Ancho was tasty, but not spicy, the Puya was spicy but had no taste, and the Cascabel was icky. So I'd use the Ancho and Puya. (The seeds, incidentally, had no flavor or spice and i threw them away)

I then decided to make the cake recipie, and split it into four small cakes. The first had 1/4 tsp Puya, and 1/2 tsp Ancho. The Second was 1/2 tsp of each. The third was 1 tsp Ancho, and the fourth was 1 tsp Puya.


I tried all of the cakes, and was fond of the all Puya cake - however, apparently after trying all of the cakes, my resistence to spice had gone up considerably, because when Dan tried it he totally freaked out about how hot it was. He liked the 1/2 and 1/2 one. So that's what I made for the final cake.


The topper was that I made an unsweetend espresso whipped cream to go with and cut down the spice for those who needed it.
The cake was awesome, if I do say so myself. It was like a non-chewy, totally fudgy, but crisp on the edges brownie. Very rich.
And it won the THROWDOWN.





*Bobby Flay was not present.
**At least that's what it feels like, I have my own coffee machine there, it's like home! (uh, work that is)