Reine de Saba - Chocolate & Almond Cake

I took Julia Child's recipe for chocolate almond cake and made a triple layered cake with chocolate and vanilla buttercream icing for the 6th week of JC100. The cake has a rich, nutty taste paired with sweet and creamy icing.

Ingredients:

4 squares, Baker's semi-sweetened chocolate
1/4 lbs. butter, melted
2 tbs. brewed coffee
2/3 cup sugar
3 egg whites
3 egg yolks
pinch of salt
1 tbs. sugar
1/3 cup pulverized almonds
1/4 tsp. almond extract
1/2 cup white flour, sifted

Brew coffee and place in a metal bowl with the chocolate and put over a pot of simmering water.
Continue with the rest of the recipe while this melts.

Cream butter and 2/3 cup of sugar together with a hand mixer until you create a pale yellow, fluffy mixture. Beat in egg yolks until well mixed.

In a separate bowl beat egg whites and salt until peaks form. Sprinkle and mix in the remaining sugar from the recipe.

Once melted, blend the chocolate mixture into the butter mixture by hand, followed by the almonds and almond extract.

Immediately stir in one fourth of the egg whites. After this fold in one third of the remaining egg whites. Alternate between adding the sifted flour and remaining whites, blending each addition by hand as you add it until all of the ingredients have been used.

Butter an 8 inch SpringForm cake pan and lightly coat with flour. Add the batter to the pan, pushing it to the pans rim.

Pre-heat the oven to 350 and bake for 25 minutes.
The cake will be done when 2 to 3 inches of the circumference are set and a toothpick poked into the area comes out clean. The middle should move slightly.

Let the cake cook before icing. Decorate with slivered almonds.

Excerpted from Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. Copyright © 1961 by Alfred A. Knopf. Reprinted with permission from the publisher Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.