Flourless raspberry & chocolate birthday cake

Today is my wonderful partner's birthday. Yesterday some friends came over in the afternoon for wine and snacks and I decided very last minute to make an early birthday cake.

His request was for a chocolate cake. Since I don't have a go-to chocolate cake currently in my repertoire I looked for a new recipe. In the end I gave it a shot slightly reworking a Nigella Lawson recipe for a flourless chocolate cake. The recipe is from her book: Feast.

I didn't have time to boil the oranges so I went a different direction and instead used 1 & 1/2 cups of frozen raspberries I already had (blitzed in food processor for a minute). I replaced the sugar component with 7 tablespoons of maple syrup and used 1/2 cup more ground almonds (2 & 1/2 cups in total) Everything went in the food processor so the batter was made in a couple of minutes.

The resulting cake was beautiful. Really moist, with a lovely berry flavour in every bite.  We had fresh cream on the side.

This makes a great size cake. You'll get 10-12 slices. So though 7 tablespoons of sweetener is quite substantial, you'll find you won't need to eat much to feel satisfied. 

A link to the original recipe is here. I'll write my method up properly when I have a chance tonight. 

Yay for winging it successfully!

And a VERY happy birthday to my best friend and baby daddy x