My friend Parag is having a birthday today (Happy Birthday, Parag!) and is also packing his bags for Portland, Oregon, where he will join Team Obama.
Well Parag, bon voyage! And for your sake, I hope you are gone a long time and ride this train straight into the White House. While you're in Portland, be sure you stop at the Pearl Bakery and load up on these bouchons au chocolat. If I lived there, I might eat one every day.
These perfect little cakes are a bit like a brownie meeting a cake -- dense, chocolatey, but a bit crumbly and dry, not gooey or fudgey. They don't have any baking soda though, so they stay pretty dense and rich, and they're studded with mini-chocolate chips, which melt to create little pockets of rich chocolatey goodness. Thank you to David Lebovitz, who needled this recipe out of the Pearl Bakery and allowed anyone to eat these delightful little cakes, without joining the BHO team.
Well Parag, bon voyage! And for your sake, I hope you are gone a long time and ride this train straight into the White House. While you're in Portland, be sure you stop at the Pearl Bakery and load up on these bouchons au chocolat. If I lived there, I might eat one every day.
These perfect little cakes are a bit like a brownie meeting a cake -- dense, chocolatey, but a bit crumbly and dry, not gooey or fudgey. They don't have any baking soda though, so they stay pretty dense and rich, and they're studded with mini-chocolate chips, which melt to create little pockets of rich chocolatey goodness. Thank you to David Lebovitz, who needled this recipe out of the Pearl Bakery and allowed anyone to eat these delightful little cakes, without joining the BHO team.
Bouchons au Chocolat
From the Pearl Bakery, via David Lebovitz's Great Book of Chocolate
Makes 12 mini-cakes
Ingredients
- 3 1/2 oz. bittersweet chocolate
- 3 1/2 oz unsweetened chocolate
- 1 3/4 c. cake flour
- 1 1/2 Tbsp. cocoa powder
- pinch of salt
- 2 sticks (1/2 lb) unsalted butter at room temperature
- 1 1/4 c. granulated sugar
- 4 large eggs at room temperature
- 1 c. mini chocolate chips
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 12-well muffin tin.
Melt the bittersweet and unsweetened chocolate in the microwave, in 30 second installments. Do not scorch or over cook. Beat the butter and the sugar with an electric mixer until they are very light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after adding each one. Stir in the melted chocolate until well incorporated.
Sift the flour and cocoa powder and salt into the bowl, and then fold it into the batter until incorporated, being careful not to overmix. Add the chocolate chips and stir just enough to combine.
Divide the batter evenly among the 12 muffin wells. Bake the cakes for 18 minutes, or until they still feel quite soft in their centers when pressed lightly with your index finger. Do not overbake them.
Allow the cakes to cool in the muffin tin for ten minutes, then pop them out and let them cool completely on a rack. Wait until they are room temperature before eating.
Serve them mint ice cream, or just eat them at tea time. Or all the time. God they're good.
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