GF Flourless Chocolate Cake with a Caramel Lime Sauce

There are a bunch of different flourless chocolate cake recipes out there. You can literally spend hours looking at them all (as I did). Some recipes call for more eggs, some call for more butter, and some want you to whip egg whites and fold it in. A person could get very frustrated trying to figure out which recipe to make. After much time and deliberation I found one that had the basics of a flourless chocolate cake but I tweaked it a bit to make it easier for all.

One thing I did want to clarify is that this recipe is for a flourless cake not a torte.

For those of you who were like me and not really sure what is the difference between the two let me break it down.

Here comes the mind teaser, a torte is a cake. I am sure there is the look of confusion on your face, its cool it happened to me too. So yes torte is cake but it's much denser. A cake is lighter (more airy) than a torte. Usually (but not always) torte has its layer soaked in a liqueur or simple syrup. Ok enough of this lets get to the list of ingredients for our flourless (GF) chocolate cake with lime sauce. I like to make the lime sauce ahead of time (actually I make it the day before but what ever you are happy with you should do).

Cake Ingredients:

• 1 cup butter, cubed
• 8 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
• 1 1/4 cups white sugar
• 1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 6 eggs
• 1 tsp of instant espresso powder
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• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Butter a 10 inch springform pan, and line with parchment paper (I cut mine in a circle to line the bottom of the pan)
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• Melt the butter in a large saucepan over low heat. Stir in chopped chocolate, and continue to stir until almost melted. Remove from heat, and stir until melted and smooth. In a large bowl, stir together 1 1/4 cups sugar, espresso, and the cocoa powder. Whisk in the eggs until well blended, then whisk in the chocolate and butter. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.
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• Bake for about 35 minutes in the preheated oven. Then I check every 2 - 3 minutes with a toothpick. You don't want to over cook it.
• Cool cake in the pan over a wire rack. Run a knife around the sides of the pan to loosen the cake, then remove the sides of the pan, and invert onto a serving plate. Remove the parchment paper.

Once the cake is cooled I like to sift some powdered sugar on the top to make it prettier.

Caramel Lime sauce ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 1/4 cups heavy cream
• 2 1/2 limes (juiced and zested)

*** I had to use the 1/2 for lime because one of my limes was dry in the juice department. Also depending on how you want your sauce to taste you can add more. I wanted just a hint of lime without it overpowering the caramel sauce.*****

In a large, heavy skillet over medium heat, melt butter. Stir in sugar and cook. The sugar will want to separate but this is normal. Just keep stirring.

Slowly stir in the cream (mixture will bubble up). Let boil 1 minute, then reduce heat to low.

The key here is patience. Make sure your butter/sugar mixture is medium brown in color. Once you add the liquid, that is the color it will be. Use medium high heat and stir continuously so sugar can dissolve and continue stirring until butter starts to brown. The butter will separate from the sugar; don't worry...you are almost there. Lower heat and continue stirring until it is a medium/dark caramel in color. Add liquid slowly. The sugar will set up again but don't worry. Just stir, stir, stir and it will all reincorporate. Bring to a rolling boil. Once I did this, I realized that the consistency was too thin so I just continued cooking at medium heat until it reached a nice consistency.

, stirring, until sugar is melted and light brown. Slowly stir in the cream (mixture will bubble up).

Let boil 1 minute, then reduce heat to low

I spooned a little of the caramel sauce on the plate and the put the cake on top and drizzled the caramel over it.

Bon Appetit.