Chocolate and Almond Cake - A Random Recipe

I have been a bit rubbish with blogger challenges recently. I always start the month off full of enthusiasm, checking out the new challenges and thinking about what I could do but then the month happens and blazes past and before I know it I'm reading the round-up wondering where the month went.
Well not this month, at the very least I'm going to get my favourite one done which regular readers will probably figure out is Dom's Random Recipe challenge. I always enjoy the fear of choosing a recipe and wondering which one I will end up suffering through.

This month's challenge is a summer themed one. Yes, Summer, that season where the sun shines, everybody goes bright burnt red, gets food poisoning off undercooked barbecue and is currently Missing in Action. Yeah I'm sure it will turn up eventually.

We were instructed to choose from the summery chapters of our books of which a few came to mind straight away but then this month's summer editions of Olive and Good Food landed and I decided to use them instead. Olive's Italian themed magazine got the nod after a quick flip of a coin and then I landed on page 46-47 and I picked the first recipe I looked at which was a Chocolate and Almond cake from Positano which reportedly grows the best almonds in Italy.

A fairly simple recipe and completely flour less so suitable for that coeliac in your life. The end result is a slightly squidgy cake with the texture resembling a good brownie. This, combined with fresh cream and even fresher strawberries or raspberries to cut through the bitter chocolate, makes a lovely cake/pud to enjoy in the sun when/if it makes an appearance.

Chocolate and Almond Cake
Ingredients
200g good chocolate (70%)
200g butter
250g caster sugar
5 eggs, seperated
250g ground almonds
zest of one lemon

To serve
Icing sugar
Cream
Strawberries/raspberries

Method
Preheat the oven to 190C/170c(fan) and line and butter a 23in cake tin
melt the chocolate in a bowl, over a pan of simmering water. stir in the butter and mix until smooth.
Add the sugar, mix well and  then add the egg yolks.
Remove from the heat and stir in the almonds.
Whisk the eggs in a bowl until they form peaks, add the grated lemon zest then fold very gently into the chocolate mix.
Pour gently into the tin and bake in a preheated oven for 30-45 minutes until the cake pulls away from the sides.
Turn out the cake onto a wire rack and leave to cool.
Dust with icing sugar and serve how you like.

Enjoy