This Ooey-Gooey Flourless Chocolate Cake Is a Valentine's Day Slam Dunk

Alex Beggs

Another year, another Valentine’s Day. Whether you’re Charlie Browning it up at the empty mailbox or ordering in pizza with the person who worships your morning breath, this holiday either matters or it doesn’t to you. But...chocolate cake? ALWAYS MATTERS. This flourless chocolate cake has an ooey-gooey molten texture, somewhere between pudding and cake, between heaven and platinum heaven (you know that’s got to exist).

How it works: In place of flour, which gives a cake structure, we’ve got six eggs + SUGAR. Eggs give structure too, and the more eggs you add, the more wet and fudgy the cake. (Combining eggs with sugar creates this meringue-like fluffy batter that turns into a crackly crust in the oven. YASSSS.) We found six eggs to be the sweet spot. And then we use melted bittersweet chocolate instead of cocoa powder for a velvety texture—not the grainy one you get with some less-than flourless chocolate cake specimens.

See the video.

The recipe is beyond simple, and breaks down tidily into three phases, marked by the bowls/cooking equipment you're using:

  1. Melt chocolate and butter in a saucepan, let that cool.

  2. While it’s cooling, whip six eggs, sugar, and vanilla for nearly 10 minutes (I used a stand mixer, but a hand mixer works too). It fluffs and foams up, turns a baby nursery pale yellow, and has a ribbony texture when you lift the paddle out. Stir the chocolate in with a spatula (so as not to deflated the airy eggs) just until everything’s fully incorporated. We just learned a baking lesson: how to "fold" batters together!

  3. Pour into buttered and parchment-lined cake pan and bake.

A little homemade whipped cream never hurt anybody.

When it’s got a crusty top and wobbly ONLY in the very center, around 30-35 minutes later in a 325° oven, you let it cool for 10 minutes in the pan, where it’ll set a little more. We want a gooey center, not liquid. Then you invert the cake onto a platter and let it cool, inverting it one final time to get that crackly top back on top because it just...looks cool.

For serving, we make freshly whipped cream (unsweetened because the cake is so rich) and toasted hazelnuts, but you could 100 percent do ice cream and chopped peanuts (omg that sounds amazing) or whatever else you love more than anyone’s morning breath.

Get the recipe:

Fudgy Flourless Chocolate Cake

Kat Boytsova