Lora Brody's Bête Noire Cake

A rich chocolate cake with a French foundation

A friend recently asked me to bake a cake for her birthday party.

Yikes. Talk about pressure! Of course, when it’s time to serve the cake, a big fuss will be made because I made it. Usually at parties, I do my best to stay out of the limelight, because when the attention turns to me…well, it’s not my favorite place to be. (I’d rather be in the kitchen!)

So I did what everyone tells you not to do: I made a cake that I’d never made before.

I was fairly confident in the recipe, which was from cookbook author Lora Brody. I’ve read a few different stories about how she came up with the cake, but the one I like is that she’d had a cake like this in France and it became her bête noire (which means, something that bothers you, or that you are obsessed with…according to Romain) as she tinkered with figuring out how to make it.

I met Lora many years ago at a culinary conference, before the internet, when people networked face-to-face, and I went to a seminar she gave. She was a great speaker and wrote cookbooks at a time when cookbooks were problem-solvers (such as The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook, which gave you a whole bunch of other things you could cook in your rice cooker), before people were sharing recipes for charred fermented cabbage with gochujang beurre blanc and hawaij-cardamom crisp or pickled cranberry, halloumi, and curry ice cream. Many were focused on helping harried people get a meal on the table, such as Peg Bracken’s I Hate to Cook Book, Poppy Cannon’s The Can-Opener Cookbook, and Help! My Apartment Has a Kitchen Cookbook.

Eventually, people like Marion Cunningham, Edna Lewis, and Ina Garten coaxed people to willingly go into the kitchen, ushering in a new era of home cooking.

This cake is very chocolaty, thanks to the addition of unsweetened chocolate. French people don’t bake with unsweetened chocolate, which I learned was an American thing from when I went to chocolate school in Belgium and the other students (from outside the U.S.) were confused when I told them that we baked with it.

It used to be very hard to find unsweetened chocolate in France, where it’s not called chocolate, but 100% pâte de cacao (cocoa paste). But I now see it in natural food stores, and I buy it at G. Detou. If you live elsewhere, Lindt sells a 99% chocolate bar, which is close enough.

The original recipe also called for extra-large eggs, which I find puzzling since (I think) most people buy large eggs. But perhaps that’s just me. I wrote a bit about egg sizes here:

The general consensus is that few people want to weigh eggs, which I get. We don’t get extra-large eggs in France so I took a look at the BBC egg conversion chart, which said 5 extra-large eggs equals 6 large eggs. If you have a scale, your egg weight (including the shells) should be around 360 grams. That’s 6 large eggs.

Whatever quirks and issues the United States has, it’s definitely winning at aluminum foil. There’s heavy-duty foil, extra-wide foil, extra-thick foil, non-stick foil, pitmaster’s foil, single-cut foil sheets, and recycled foil. A French friend used to beg me to bring back rolls of foil for her. Thankfully, I’m the king of reusing things, so every scrap or sheet of foil gets reused until it’s kaput.

Another cultural difference, which I’ve probably mentioned before, is that in France, home bakers (and professional bakers) don’t automatically add vanilla to desserts. (Also in France, there’s no word or term for “home bakers.”) If one does add vanilla, vanilla will be added to the name of the dessert. People here have pretty acute palates, and if I do put a few drops of vanilla in something, people will invariably taste it and say, “Oh, you added vanilla to this…” even though I’ve literally added 1/16th of a teaspoon to the batter of a rich chocolate cake. Somehow, they can taste it. I’m impressed.

Another secret extract that I sometimes sneak into desserts is chocolate extract. I never call for it in recipes because it’s something that’s not easy to find. Twenty or so years ago, when my first cookbook came out, someone who went to the same university as me wrote that his family company had been making chocolate extract for years. Their primary market was the food service industry since he told me that when chocolate is processed, it loses some “top notes” of flavor. Some manufacturers use chocolate extract to add them back.

Since then, I think they’ve stopped selling to the public, although Nielsen-Massey makes it. (Fortunately, I have a lifetime supply of it, as well as a lifetime supply of American aluminum foil.) Some people also add a teaspoon of instant coffee or espresso powder to chocolate batters, which you could do as well here.

This recipe does have a “deal-breaker” element, meaning that it calls for a candy thermometer to make the syrup for the batter. The words “insert a candy thermometer…” make some people panic, as “heat 4 quarts of oil…” does to me. Nope, I’m not deep-frying at home.

Fortunately, the syrup in this recipe is pretty forgiving, and you can just boil it for 3-4 minutes and use the visual clues I offer if you don’t have a thermometer. Pas de problème.

Lastly, in case you’re wondering, when I brought this cake to the party (yes, I took a slice out, partially, to show you the inside…then I put it back, covering my tracks with powdered sugar), it was a huge hit. It was a little tricky slicing it into twenty pieces, but one woman scraped up all the chocolate scraps left on the platter and wrapped them up to bring home with her. I was impressed! And so was she.

Lora Brody’s Bête Noire

Ten Servings

Adapted from Growing Up on the Chocolate Diet by Lora Brody

I saw somewhere that someone made this cake using all bittersweet chocolate, replacing the unsweetened chocolate with bittersweet chocolate. So if you can’t find unsweetened chocolate, you could give that a go. But for a true bittersweet experience, I’d go with unsweetened chocolate.

Note that this cake is quite soft and may prove challenging to get a neat slice from, which is fine with me, as the unctuous texture is worth the few scattered crumbs on the plate.

1 cup (200g) plus 1/3 cup (65g) sugar

1/2 cup (125ml) water

8 ounces (225g) bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

4 ounces (115g) unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped

Pinch of salt

8 ounces (225g) unsalted butter, cubed

6 large eggs (or 5 extra-large eggs), at room temperature

1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF (180ºC). Butter the bottom and sides of a 9-inch (23cm) cake pan. (I used a glass-bottom springform pan, which makes serving the cake easier, but you can use a regular springform pan or a standard cake pan.) If using a springform pan, wrap the outside of the cake pan, across the bottom and up the sides, with a sheet of aluminum foil to prevent water from getting in. If using a standard cake pan, line the bottom with a circle of parchment paper.

Set the cake pan in a larger pan, such as a roasting pan, that you’ll use as a water bath, and set aside.

2. Put 1 cup of sugar and the water in a medium saucepan. If using a glass thermometer, clip it to the pan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and cook until the temperature is 220ºF (104ºC). (I cooked mine to 225ºF/107ºC, and it was fine. If you do cook it too much over that, add a little water, which will lower the temperature, then heat it back up to the right temperature.) If you don’t have a thermometer, boil the syrup for about 3-4 minutes, until it’s the consistency of warm maple syrup.

3. Turn off the heat and stir in the chopped chocolates, mixing until smooth. Add a pinch of salt and then mix in the butter, stirring until smooth. If the mixture needs it, feel free to give it a few brisk stirs with a whisk to smooth it out.

4. Put the eggs and the remaining 1/3 cup of sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and whip at high speed until the mixture has tripled in volume and is thick, 10 to 15 minutes.

5. Remove the bowl from the mixer and gradually fold in the melted chocolate, reaching down to the bottom of the bowl to make sure everything is getting incorporated. (In the original recipe, the chocolate is added to the eggs with the mixer on low speed, which you’re welcome to do, but I like to finish batters like this by hand.)

6. Scrape the batter into the prepared cake pan. Fill the roasting pan with very hot water so it reaches halfway up the outside of the cake pan. Bake the cake for 25-35 minutes, until a sharp paring knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Mine baked for 30 minutes, but start checking it at the 25-minute mark.

7. Remove the cake from the oven, and from the water bath, and let cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Carefully run a sharp knife around the outside of the cake to loosen it from the pan, then remove the sides of the springform pan.

8. If you’ve baked the cake in a standard cake pan, let the cake cool completely (although the original recipe said you should do this while the cake is still warm, after the 10-minute cooling period, I would wait until the cake has mostly cooled and “set”), then set a baking sheet over the cake. Simultaneously turn over the cake in the pan and the baking sheet. Lift off the cake pan and peel off the parchment paper. Place a serving platter, serving side down, over the cake then turn both over at the same time. Remove the baking sheet.

Serving Notes

-I baked mine in a glass-bottom springform pan, so I served it right off the base. The cake is quite moist, and it’s best to manipulate it as little as possible.

-This is a very soft cake. The best way to cut the cake is to dip a sharp knife in very hot water, wipe the blade clean, and make the first cut. Repeat the process, dipping the knife in hot water and wiping the blade clean between each subsequent slice. Conversely, you can heat the blade of the knife with the flame of the blowtorch or gas stove before slicing, wiping it clean, and rewarming it with the flame between each slice.

-If you’d like, you can sprinkle the top of the cake with powdered sugar or sift a mix of cocoa powder and powdered sugar over the top.

-Serve the cake with whipped cream or ice cream, or on its own.

Storage: The cake is best, and lightest, the day it’s baked. It can be kept for a few days at room temperature but will get denser.

Bete Noire Cake Recipe

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