Flourless Almond & Cognac Cake | Gluten-Free & Rich in Flavor

Welcome back to the channel! So this week we're going to do easy baking for all of you that are gluten intolerant or celiac. I came across a cake called the cognac and almond cake. It's a very humble, simple, super fast cake that you can make. It is served in these little dishes, you know, ramekin, whatever. It's one portion. You can make it larger if you want, but you can eat it like this with a bit of cream or anything like that. You can also use the batter to make like some kind of a cupcake, maybe with icing on top. So if you've been looking for something that tastes good and that tastes like a proper cake, like a bit of a french cake, without flour, you want to have a go at this one. Now let's begin. So how difficult is the cake? What are the skills needed? Well if you're able to melt butter in the pan, that's it. You're good to go. So not too difficult. The very important here, anytime you bake and you have something based on almond like this, an almond based almond cake, in France a lot of time we use a few drops of bitter almond essence and you find this in every supermarket, every baking shop and that really boosts the almond taste because that can be a little bit bland. You know, you can feel the almond but not so much. So having the bitter almond essence really helps. The alcohol is optional. I'm making it, it's cognac. You can use rum instead and you can skip the alcohol if you're someone that, you know, don't want to have alcohol at all in the cake. But again, the more ingredients you remove, the more taste you remove. So things will get blander and blander as you reduce. Okay, let's begin. And now for the stove, the only thing we have to do, as I said, is to melt the butter. So I'm going to use like a medium, medium, medium low, something like this. And you take all the butter and you melt it slowly. So you wait until it melts on its own. All right, the butter is melted. I'm turning my heat off and we're going to leave it on the side here. We'll cool down a little bit and let me show you the rest. So as soon as the butter is melted, make sure you've got everything ready. Here, your mise en place, all the ingredients. And for the ground almonds, it is always a good idea, if you can, to pass it through a sieve like this. It takes a bit of time, but at least you don't have clumps when you think of something nice and fine. Okay, so I'm going to do this first. And now we're ready. Now before anything, we're going to preheat the oven. One thing I've noted is that for anything baking, using conventional heat, for me, actually works way better and it's easier to control. So here, I'm going to use 190 degrees Celsius with top and bottom element on non-fan four. So the fan is disabled, just static heat. Okay, we've got here our ground almond. And by the way, this is a blanched almond. Okay, there's no skin in this. It's white like this. And it's not an almond flour. All right, so we've got here your paste. Okay, in there, I'm going to add my cream. So this is creme fraiche. You can use a thick cream if you don't have anything like this. Not a problem. Okay, and mix that in. Once everything is incorporated, I'm going to get some lemon. I don't want to add too much of the lemon because I've tried some before. If you put too much, it's going to be like a lemon cake. So just a little bit. What I want, on the other hand, is a good tablespoon of cognac. You want something boozy. I mean, we like it. We like to have a little bit of alcohol in France, in anything, basically, not just a dessert. And we mix. So we got still a very nice paste. This is the consistency I've got. It's not runny. It's kind of solid. And now we're going to add the sugar. Now, sugar originally is like 50 grams, but I've upped the sugar a little bit because I thought it was not sweet enough otherwise. And for me, in a dessert, if it's not sweet, it's not a dessert. So I like to have something nice and sweet. But if you want, if you have something a bit less sweet, you can put just 50 grams. Now keep in mind that I'm making a small portion, but I will give you different ingredients for four people on the recipe. And from here, we're going to add some wet ingredients. We're going to add the whole egg. And after the whole egg, we're going to have an egg yolk. So very careful with the whole egg, because that's going to splash everywhere. So you go very gently. Okay. And you start to incorporate slowly like that. Okay. So very gently. So really, we kind of have that kind of cake batter consistency. Look at that. I love this. And there's no flour. So to make it richer, you add an egg yolk. Okay. Egg yolk in, and same thing. Mix the whole lot. So that's it. We're done. Look at this beautiful batter. We've got a color, the consistency. There's no flour. And all that's left to do now is to leave this to rest for about seven hours. No, just kidding. There's actually no resting time for that batter. We're going to be able to use it as soon as the oven is ready. But first, of course, if you use ramekin or a dish, we need to prepare it. Let me show you. Now for the baking of the dish, you can use a little ramekin or things like this. Okay. But this is like a porcelain or anything in ceramic. And you want to avoid using metal because I've tried, and it will really kind of burn the outside very quickly. And the inside doesn't cook properly. So you can, you put some butter in there. You can use oil as well. And you're going to burn the whole thing inside like that. Okay. And once this is done, if you want to unmold your cake, what you can do is to use some extra sugar and kind of put it everywhere in there, in the mold. Okay. Make sure it's coated everywhere. Then you remove the excess. And it's going to help to really unmold the cake if you want to. But it is not supposed to. Okay. It's meant to be just like this, buttered. You can have a little bit of sugar. We're going to put the batter and we're going to bake it. And that's about it. Now, just before you're going to be baking, always wait to put the almonds, the bitter almond at last, you know, to make sure it's really in there. And this is the amount. You see just a little bit. A little bit of this is beautiful. If you have too much of it, it is going to be absolutely bitter. So mix it well. And I'm going to put this straight into my little dish there. Now, keeping in mind, this is a very simple cake. As I said, it can be used as a base. So it's not a Michelin star thing. It's pretty humble. Okay. And you don't want to fill your whole dish in here because it will grow as it cooks. So what I used to do, I leave always some space in there. And the way of the heat, it will even out. And you want to have like this kind of funny shapes at the top. But that's about it. Okay. So depends on the size of your dishes can be smaller, bigger, as I said. But I just want to show you how it looks like. And I'm going to taste it. So this is going to go in the oven. This is small. So small is going to be 15 to 20 minutes. If it's larger, obviously the whole batter, I'm going to give you four people for one cake. It's about 40 minutes typically. Okay. So you're going to have to keep an eye on your oven. And usually when it's kind of nice and golden, it's done. So I see you then. My Cognac and Almond flour-free cake is now out of the oven. And the time is very subjective. Last time I had a little bit less batter. I think it took 20 minutes. It was more like 25 minutes. And I've made a test portion here with the rest of the batter. But this is the result. As I said, there's nothing thrilling about the look of that cake. This is why typically it is just served into a nice dish. This is the dish that makes the whole thing. Now what I tend to do here, I've recycled the leftover butter that I had in my pan, you know, the butter with some sugar, and I added some Cognac. And I've created a bit of a buttery Cognac glaze. And glazing for me is one of those things that really kind of add a little bit of flair to a simple cake. It's nothing super special, but that moist, buttery, Cognac-y kind of topping here. And it goes a long way. I'm going to put a little bit in the back one day. Okay. And you got a glaze. And it's just a matter then to add a little bit of a sprinkle of standard sugar on there. You need to go over the top. And that's it. Very, very basic. So I'm going to keep this one. And what we're going to do here, we're going to try that little one here. All right. So now we have our little tester. So I've got a bit of the glaze. I'm going to try a little bit of sugar on top, as intended. It's kind of a regional recipe. And if you want, you can unmold it. You can run a knife and take it out. But it is meant to be eaten like this. So let's see. Oh, you see? It comes out of the mold in there. Still a little bit moist in here. Look at that. Look at that kind of harmony. It's kind of a bit dough, is it? It is definitely moist. Can you see the interior there? I'm going to try to go raw again. Let's try to unmold the thing. Oh, it looks like in there. Okay, so this is the cake. It's because there's no flour. I mean, this is the kind of thing that happened. You could cook it at lower temperature a bit longer. I'm going to break it open just to show you the whole thing. So you see, it's kind of dense. But to keep that moisture, you need to have it like that. You see? So it's just about cooked. It could be cooked a bit more. But to be honest, as a flour-free treat, it does remind me of the king cake filling. And it works really well. And you could flavor it with lemon, orange zest. You can change the liquor in there. Oh, well, let's finish it. But yeah, not bad. So as you can see, I've ate the whole thing quite fast. It was quite tasty. I've been trying it again in the background. We've been trying it with crème fraîche. I think with ice cream. There's plenty of options in there. It is versatile. I would recommend to have the glaze on top. You can put icing. You can even make cupcake. But it's quite dense. If you want something that's more like a sponge cake, beat about two egg whites into a meringue, and fold it for the batter and cook this. You're going to have more volume. You're going to have a cake that is higher. You're going to be able to slice it and start to make layered cakes with crème around or whatever you like, decoration, you know, nuts or whatever you like. So please leave me a comment in the comment section. Try the recipe. Take it further. Make it yours. And let me know what you think. I will leave you with that picture. And I will see you next week for another episode on the French Cooking Academy. Take care. Bye-bye.