Marzipan Chocolate Cake

Adapted from 101 Cookbooks

Ingredients: 
220g Marzipan -- 28% almonds, from Odense
180g whole almonds -- roasted
45g cornstarch
5 jumbo eggs
1/4 tsp salt
32g cocoa powder
80g butter
10g vanilla extract

Melt butter. Take off heat, and toss in the cocoa powder. Whisk until smooth right away.

Whilst blending, it is important to scrape down the sides and bottom of the blender every so often.

Put the marzipan and almonds into the blender and grind until fine. If there are some almond chunks still, that is fine. It is more important that you do NOT hit the nut butter stage. Toss in the cornstarch, and mix briefly.

Add eggs one at a time, blending in between. Add the vanilla extract and salt.

Pour in the cocoa + butter mixture and blend some more.

Divide into tins, and bake at 180C. It is ready when a toothpick comes out clean.

After 5-10 minutes, turn them out onto a rack. You should do this while the cakes are still hot, before they start steaming in the pan.

Notes: 
When grinding the marzipan and almonds together, it is very important that you do not reach the point where the almonds start releasing oil. If there are still chunks of almond, it will blend down as you add in the eggs.

I am mostly doing this because I have marzipan with a very low almond content. The good stuff has a minimum of 53%. You might be able to use that straight up. My proportions of almond to marzipan is adjusted to achieve 60% almonds.

I poured out the almond + egg mixture into the pot with the cocoa powder + butter and whisked it in by hand. I only did this because I was not sure if my blender mixed everything properly. The next time, I'll just pour the butter mixture into the blender.

I divided the batter into 5 bear-shaped tins. They contain 150g of batter each, with leftovers. The original recipe suggests a 20cm tin, and I think that sounds about right to me.

For 150g of batter in a short tin, I only needed 20 minutes before the toothpick came out clean.

Tasting Notes: 
Very dense and heavy. I might see about using less eggs next time.

Pierre Hermes has a similar recipe that involves heating the egg + marzipan mixture to 60C, I might give that a shot the next time.

Either skip the cocoa powder altogether -- some almond extract or rum might be nice -- or add more. The chocolate favor was not strong enough.

The cakes popped out of the tins nicely, and the lines from my bear tins were clearly delineated.

One of the bears had a giant bubble. Next time, rap the pans on the table before baking, or pour the batter in from a greater height.