Following the previous post, I present you with cake number 2 of 5 baked for the birthday festivities. A true must for both chocolate and amaretti lovers. Amaretti are possibly my favourite biscuits, they should be yours too. And don’t get me started on Amaretto, the tastiest liquor ever created. Those sours are dangerous. Remind me again why I decided to give up alcohol for Lent? At least there are only 22 days left and Fortnum’s Easter sponge pudding (honey, amaretto & almond sponge pudding with a soft chocolate centre….nom) waiting at the end of it. Not to forget the amaretto butter topping, Easter dessert wouldn’t be half as good without it.

Enough about Amaretto. This cake, like the Linzer, is best after having rested in a cool place (e.g. cellar) for a day or two. Perfect if you have a lot of baking or cooking planned!

Chocolate Amaretti Loaf Cake

adapted from Wildeisen

You’ll need

200g Amaretti, ground in a food processor
200g dark chocolate, 70% cocoa
150g butter
100g ground skinless almonds
25g flour
0.5 dl espresso
140g caster sugar
7-8g baking powder
4 eggs
a pinch of salt
Icing sugar

1. Butter a 30cm long loaf cake tin and dust with flour (don’t use a smaller tin, first time round I did and had quite a mess of overflowing cake in the oven). Cool until needed. Preheat the oven to 170°C.
2. Break your chocolate into pieces and place into a glass bowl along with the espresso and the butter. Slowly melt over a water bath.
3. Mix the processed Amaretti with the almonds, flour and baking powder.
4. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, sugar and salz for about 5 minutes until you have a light cream. Stir in the melted chocolate followed by the Amaretti mixture.
5. Pour your batter into the prepared loaf cake tin and bake for about 60 minutes on the second lowest shelf of your oven. A skewer should come out almost clean (you’d rather have it a bit underdone than dry).
6. Once baked, let the cake rest for a few minutes in the tin before turning it out onto a cooling rack.
7. Before serving, dust with icing sugar.

Rating: 9/10

A small bonus: after making this cake for the first time I had a brilliant idea: Amaretti-Chocolate Fondants. Substituting most of the flour in our previous recipe with ground amaretti worked magic. They took quite a bit longer to bake (almost flourless), but tasted amazing.