I love it when a tiny alteration, which hardly takes time at all, makes a huge difference to a recipe. The sheer joy of that ‘eureka-moment’ when you figure out a way to improve on something great. Like the moment when Ruth Graves Wakefield decided to dump a bunch of chocolate pieces into her cookie dough and thus invented the chocolate chip cookie. Or when Lemuel Benedict had a nasty hangover and Oscar Tschirky made something beautiful and tasty out of the separate ingredients he wanted for his hangover cure – Eggs Benedict were born.
I love food inventions like these. They don’t have to be fancy, or difficult. It just takes that 1 moment where you defy the rules of what you’re used to as a cook and just do something else. Those are the moments magic gets created.
Regular flour and toasted flour side by side.
A while ago Not without Salt posted a recipe for cookies using toasted flour. I figured what’s good for cookies, must be good for cake too. I decided to make a chocolate chip cake, using toasted flour. At first I was slightly skeptical, what would possibly happen to the flour when heating it before cooking.
The results were magical. I wanted to eat the entire bowl of batter without cooking it. The taste was nutty, decadent and oh so rich. Nothing compared to regular untoasted flour. I was converted. I didn’t take pictures of that cake, but just devoured it quickly and that was that.
Skip ahead a few weeks. I’m craving cake, so as soon as I came home from work I grabbed Anne-Sophie and turned on the oven. I decided to go for the toasted flour again, but this time turn it up a notch further by also using browned butter.
The amount of cupcakes I produced was a lot less than it could’ve been. I’m not scared of raw eggs, if you know what I mean. These cupcakes were very dense, not skillfully decorated and looked very uninteresting. It didn’t matter though, because the taste was divine. So don’t make these when you’re trying to impress someone with your beautiful cake decorating skills, or fancy cupcake liners. You might as well make 1 large cake out of it. Do make them though, if you crave the richest tasting cake you’ve ever eaten.
My cupcakes look kind of funny. That’s what happens when you have ‘cute, shaped, silicone muffin pans’ and forget to add baking powder until after everything is already mixed and part of it has been poured in. They still tasted the same. You can, and should, adapt this method to your own favorite simple chocolate chip cake. My standard cake is much like a pound cake, dense, but tasty. Enjoy!
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| Toasted flour chocolate chip cake |
Ingredients
- 200 grams butter
- 200 grams caster sugar
- 200 grams toasted flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 4 medium eggs
- chocolate chips (amount and color to taste)
- more chocolate (chips) for glaze (optional)
Instructions
- Toast your flour in a little saucepan. Just place it in a pan, on medium heat and stir regularly so it doesn’t get stuck on the pan. Slowly but surely the color should get darker, nuttier. At the same time, in a separate pan, brown the butter, then let it cool a bit.
- In a mixing bowl (using the paddle attachment) mix sugar and browned butter, add the eggs, one at a time and keep mixing until all the eggs are incorporated.
- Sift the flour into the egg/butter mixture, a little at a time and mix slowly. Add the baking powder and mix well.
- Once all the flour is mixed in well, add the chocolate chips. Pour batter into cake pan or cupcake liners and bake at 350F until they are fully cooked. (A skewer comes out clean) for cupcakes this should be about 20-25 minutes, for a full sized cake it might be 40 minutes or longer.
- If you’d like, you can glaze the cake with a little melted chocolate once it starts to cool down.
- Serve and enjoy!
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3 Responses to Toasted flour choc chip cake
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Networks
What a novel idea! Can’t wait to try it out.
Intesreting idea! I will have to give it a try sometime.
if your like taste of roasted flour, I recommend you to try St. Sarkis cake – it’s divine!
I found it in blog Taste of Beirut