‘Really unusual’ chocolate cake
Recipe only uses pantry staples
“I think that the idea behind it was basically making a cake with very little ingredients, and very little fresh ingredients around.” Emiko Davies
Emiko Davies‘ torta al cioccolato (chocolate cake) comes together with no eggs, no butter — just basic pantry staples.
Inspired by a nearly 100-year-old recipe in Ada Boni’s Il talismano della felicità (a.k.a. The Talisman), it suits our pandemic times as much as it did 1920s Italy. It's featured in her cookbook, Torta della Nonna: A Collection of the Best Homemade Italian Sweets.
“This is a really unusual chocolate cake,” says Davies. “I think that the idea behind it was basically making a cake with very little ingredients, and very little fresh ingredients around.”
Milk is the only liquid required for the recipe, and even that is negotiable. Davies has had great success substituting nut milks, rice milk, coconut milk — which “comes out amazing” — as well as coffee and even water.
The Talisman was published between the First and Second World wars, and Davies wrote Torta della Nonna during Florence’s first COVID lockdown last spring. Meeting the pandemic needs of bakers, especially in the face of food shortages, was front of mind as she developed her version of the wartime recipe.
“It’s a pretty amazing cake,” she says. “And one that I wanted to highlight one hundred years later as a useful cake for when you want to bake something, but maybe you don’t have everything in the fridge, or just feel like whipping up a cake without having to go outside.”
Step 1
Preheat the oven to 350°F
Step 2
Grease a 20 cm (8 in) round cake tin and dust with sifted cocoa powder. Tap upside down to remove any excess.
Step 3
Place the dry ingredients together in a bowl (do make sure the cocoa powder is sifted well to ensure you don’t have problems with lumps later). Add the vanilla to the milk, then add this, bit by bit, to the dry ingredients, stirring with a wooden spoon until combined and smooth. If the batter is too stiff, you can add more milk (or even water).
Step 4
Pour into the tin and gently smooth the top. Bake for roughly 30 minutes, or until the centre of the cake feels springy to the touch and it smells cooked (see note) — it will be distinctly chocolatey.
Step 5
When it has cooled enough to handle, remove from the tin and serve as desired — dusted with icing sugar or, when completely cooled, covered in ganache, perhaps with some berries on top or whipped cream on the side.
Serves: six-eight
Notes: I’ve experimented with countless versions of this cake, especially making it dairy-free by replacing the milk with alternatives — I’ve tried it with almond milk and coconut milk (my personal favourite, as it makes a cake so buttery you would never guess it had none); coffee, which brings out the flavour of the chocolate beautifully (I go with a freshly made filtered coffee or an Italian-style moka coffee); and simply water (yes, it works!). I encourage you to experiment if you are interested in making this with other liquids; it is quite surprising how well it works. If you find the batter is slightly stiffer than you would expect you may need to add a little more liquid.
If you are using a larger cake tin, it will be slightly thinner and you may want to check the cake a little earlier to ensure you do not over-bake this cake.
A word on the cocoa powder. I use Dutch (unsweetened) cocoa powder, which is the most readily available type in Italy. In this process, the cocoa has been neutralized from its naturally acidic state, which makes it darker in colour, slightly more mellow in flavour, but also more soluble (for drinks such as hot chocolate). Importantly for baking, Dutch cocoa powder must be paired with baking powder rather than baking soda or bicarbonate of soda, which Ada Boni’s original recipe calls for — as in many older recipes, she may have used natural cocoa powder, which is acidic and reacts with the baking soda to help the cake rise. You can also use natural cocoa powder here if it is all you have, but if you are using Dutch cocoa powder do not use baking soda in place of the baking powder. It’s all about the chemistry.