The Problem With Being The Only Cook In Your Household: Chocolate Orbit Cake

Do you remember the spread I did for John’s birthday? And the peanut butter pie? To die for! Do you remember the 3rd birthday celebration feast and Alex’s monkey cupcakes? I spent forever planning those… Sammy has a fall birthday so you guys have not seen her birthday yet.

But anyway, this week it is my birthday. Money is tight because it is always tight–and tighter than ever with the house–and so the same quandry comes up as it does every year. What to do for Laura’s birthday so she doesn’t spend the day cooking for herself?

And as is frequently the case, there is no good solution. We went out for Indian–and ordered whatever we wanted, where normally we don’t get all the sides and appies. It was fun–but I long for the day I can go to a restaurant that I don’t regularly frequent, if you know what I mean. Anyway, for dessert there is not much doing in this town except ice cream. So I decided I was going to bake my own dessert–and it had to be silky, creamy, chocolate and VERY easy.

After perusing my books, the choice came down to individual ramekin baked pudding type desserts, that I have made before, and David Lebovitz’s Chocolate Orbit Cake, which I have meant to make for forever now (it comes with every single bar of Scharffen Berger 62% semi sweet chocolate, and you know how many of those I have been through) and which I was just drooling over at Eggs On Sunday.

So clearly I had no choice, the orbit cake it was.

This version of his orbit cake was designed expressly for Scharffen Berger, and so it is slightly smaller than the one that Amy made over at Eggs On Sunday. Ironically, I use so much of their chocolate that reducing it to fit exactly one of their bars was pointless for me–instead I just finished up one and plowed through another. If I had realized that I might have made the one from Lebovitz’s blog, as Amy did.

This cake is every bit as easy as it sounds–but do not leave unmolding it for the last minute. Otherwise you might end up trying to placate 2 over-excited toddlers with spoons of whipped cream while you microwave a towel over and over again to loosen the bottom of the cake. Suffice to say it is a good thing that the cake was absolutely spectacular, because otherwise I think John was ready to kill me. It is also why the pictures aren’t that great–by the time we got home and got it unmolded, it was dark outside. Now that I have gotten used to not using the flash, it was a bit traumatic to go back to using it!

But spectacular it was. I have made other flourless or nearly flourless cakes, and while I am not sure of why, this cake was definitely superior. Maybe it is the utter simplicity of only 4 ingredients. Maybe it is the use of semi sweet chocolate instead of bittersweet. I don’t know. But I will be making this again, preferably for a crowd, because a small slice dolloped with whipped cream is more than adequate.

Which means I now have a lot of flourless cake to share with the world. I am taking it to a playdate tomorrow and then possibly home to Columbus to my parents’ house after that. I’ll be gone for several days, during which my posting might be a little more sporadic.