TWD: Chocolate Armagnac Cake

This week’s Tuesdays With Dorie recipe was Chocolate Armagnac Cake – The Cake That Got Me Fired. Dorie has a fun story on page 278 of Baking about how she was fired from a job for changing the whisky-raisin combination in the original iteration of this cake to prune-armagnac. She does say you can use Armagnac, cognac, brandy, or scotch whisky, so I used brandy, since I had some leftover from a previous baking endeavor.



I think I would be more excited about this cake if I hadn’t baked and consumed so many chocolate desserts recently. It is the perfect cake to eat if you have a serious chocolate craving, as it is almost flourless, and therefore very dense with chocolate flavor. I also think that the mild fruit and alcohol flavor in the cake would lend well to being served with a glass of port at a dinner party.



Since I don’t have a lot to say about this cake right now, I will do a short equipment review. Pictured below is a small saucepan. It kind of looks like something that would be found in a pre-schooler’s “My First Kitchen” set, but it is actually a single-serving egg poacher. My brother gave it to me for Christmas since he knows I like poached eggs, and said I could use it for other things, too. I was skeptical of the pan’s utility, but now that I make mini desserts for Tuesdays with Dorie, I use it constantly. I would say it is my current favorite kitchen gadget.



I gave this recipe an 8 for Deliciousness and a 4 for Effort, giving it an EDR of 2. Many thanks to Lyb of And Then I Do The Dishes for choosing this decadent dessert and for giving me the opportunity to both flambe and use my new cake stand for the first time. You can find the recipe on Lyb’s site and you can see what the other bakers thought of this cake via the TWD blogroll.