Simple Stay-home Recipes: Pierre Herme’s 5-ingredient Chocolate Cake

I’m sure many of us have been baking and cooking a lot during the ‘Circuit Breaker’ period, most likely with quick and easy recipes. Staying home is stifling enough without adding the stress of having to measure ingredients to the exact gram, after all.

But what if I told you that you, too, could cook like famous chefs? Keep a lookout for our recipes which will cover chef-approved or chef-recommended dishes.

Today, let’s satiate your sweet tooth with Pierre Hermé’s 5-Ingredient Chocolate Cake, in just five steps!

For those of you who don’t know who Pierre Hermé is, this French pastry chef and chocolatier is well-known for unusual macaron combinations like olive oil and vanilla, and wild rose, fig cream and foie gras.

We may not be able to match his skill in crafting intricate desserts, but at least we can put together this easy yet scrumptious chocolate cake, as seen from Pierre Hermé’s Instagram post.

Ingredients

• 250g soft butter (at room temperature)
• 180g sugar
• 4 eggs
• 70g sifted flour
• 250g melted chocolate (Pierre Hermé used Valrhona’s premium Guanaja chocolate, but I settled for Lindt 90% Dark Chocolate)

Tools

• Mixing bowl
• Whisk OR Wooden spoon
• Cake tin
• Oven

Recipe Preparation

Preparation Time: 5 minutes; Cooking Time: 35 minutes
Feeds four to five

• Mix sugar, butter, and eggs.
• Add sifted flour to the mixture, and mix well.
• Add melted chocolate to the mixture, and mix until evenly combined.
• Pour into a buttered and floured cake tin.
• Bake in the oven at 180°C for 30 – 35 minutes and leave to cool.

Recipe (In Pictures)

Step 1: Mix sugar, butter, and eggs.

Step 2: Add sifted flour to the mixture, and mix well. Make sure that the mixture is smooth, without any lumps. It should be slightly viscous and sticky.

Step 3: Add melted chocolate to the mixture, and mix until evenly combined. There shouldn’t be any streaks of colour—it should be a lovely warm chocolate brown.

Step 4: Pour into a buttered and floured cake tin. You can use a spatula to smooth out the surface of the batter, or you can also let it sit for a while—the batter will set naturally.

Step 5: Bake in the oven at 180°C for 30 – 35 minutes and leave to cool.

Even as the chocolate cake was baking, the rich, inviting cocoa fragrance was simply mouth-watering.

After cooling it, I cut out a piece to try. Texture-wise, there was a lovely crispy crust atop the superbly crumbly cake. While it flaked easily when I pushed a fork down, the chocolate cake simply melted in my mouth. Imagine the soft, crumbly texture of butter cookies, but with the rich, decadent bittersweet notes of dark chocolate.

The chocolate used really makes a difference; since this was such a simple chocolate cake, with sugar, butter, egg and flour as the base, the bulk of the flavour came from the chocolate. As someone who prefers the bittersweet edge of chocolates, I naturally chose 90% dark chocolate from Lindt (sorry, no fancy Valrhona chocolate here).

On a side note, Lindt chocolate melts superbly well and evenly. Depending on your preference, you can also opt for other, sweeter chocolates. Do note that since the recipe already includes sugar, you might need to adjust the amount of sugar used if you’re switching to sweeter chocolate.

You might even want to pair your chocolate cake with the most classic of accompaniments: vanilla ice cream. Creamy and cold to the warm and crumbly chocolate cake, this is sure to sate even the direst dessert cravings.

If you leave it in the fridge overnight, it gets denser and fudgier. Mmm, delicious. Want to feel like a famous pastry chef for a day? Try this 5-ingredient Chocolate Cake recipe, and share your experience with us!

Expected Damage: S$6 – S$10 per portion (feeds 4 – 5 pax)

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