Two Almond Cakes for Passover: Belinda's Flourless Coconut and Chocolate Cake, and Almond and Amaretto Cake

For my Passover baking, I made two flourless cakes that both use ground almonds. The first was "Belinda's Flourless Coconut and Chocolate Cake" from Sweet by Helen Goh and Yotam Ottolenghi. The cake is very simple. You beat room temperature butter with sugar, dried unsweetened coconut, vanilla seeds, and salt until light and fluffy; add eggs; and incorporate ground almonds. The recipe calls for a 900g loaf tin, which I understand to mean an 8.5-inch by 4.5-inch loaf pan. I tripled the recipe and divided the batter between two 10-inch by 5-inch loaf pans. I thought about putting heating rods in the middle of the pans but decided to skip it. 

In retrospect, I definitely should have used the heating rods, because my cakes took much longer than the 40 minutes specified in the cookbook to bake. For some reason I didn't write down the baking time in the cookbook, but I seem to recall it being in the neighborhood of 70 minutes or so. The cakes were slightly burnt on the bottom (even though I had used light-colored pans and lined them with parchment). But since you invert the cakes before glazing them, I just sliced off a thin layer of burnt cake from the bottom (which ended up being the top) of both cakes. 

After I applied the chocolate water ganache -- made from dark chocolate, sugar, glucose, water, vanilla seeds, and butter -- no one was the wiser to the fact that I had cut off a burnt layer of cake. I had enough ganache to cover both loaves in their entirety, including the sides. I thought that this cake was so freakin' good. The cake itself was the chewy consistency of the inside of a Mounds candy bar, but without the cloying sweetness. It was very much like a mix between a Mounds interior and almond paste. Which is to say that it was rich, chewy, and fantastic. The chocolate ganache -- which set semi-firm -- added a sort of coated candy bar feeling, making it seem extra decadent. This simple little cake was indulgent and amazing.

I also made Benjamina Ebuehi's "Almond & Amaretto Cake" from The New Way to Cake. The headnote says the recipe is inspired by a Portuguese Toucinho do Céu cake. The recipe calls for one whole egg and eight egg yolks, so I was expecting the end result to be quite rich. 

 

To make the batter, you bring a mixture of sugar, water, and vanilla to a boil; add ground almonds and cook until the mixture starts to thicken; stir in butter; and incorporate the egg and egg yolks, followed by amaretto. I made the suggested substitution of almond extract for amaretto and baked the cake for 35 minutes, longer than the specified range of 25-30 minutes. After the cake was completely cooled, I released it from the pan and sprinkled on powdered sugar.

My cake was shorter than the one in the cookbook photo, even though I used the exact pan size specified (a 9-inch round). Despite my longer baking time, the cake was still quite damp in the center and this cake seemed like wet almond paste to me. While it was deliciously almond-y, I didn't particularly like the damp texture -- and I think the texture was as intended, because the headnote refers to the cake as having "an almost custard-like feel."

While I definitely preferred the coconut and chocolate cake, I also got some very positive feedback on the almond and amaretto cake. So I guess depending on whether you want your flourless almond cake to be candy-like or custard-like, you can choose!

Recipes: 

• "Belinda's Flourless Coconut and Chocolate Cake" from Sweet by Helen Goh and Yotam Ottolenghi, recipe available here. 
• "Almond & Amaretto Cake" from The New Way to Cake by Benjamina Ebuehi.