Is this all just a decadent dream? Today we're watery, whipped and synonymous with sophistication as we tackle these crackly topped, flour free, confusingly textured desserts. We learn that eggs is eggs and wonder where all the adjectives are before Molly drops the ball. Stay tuned after the credits for an important addendum!
Episode 163: Birthday Cake LIVE!
The Pancake Princess cake bake-off
Alison Roman's Fallen Chocolate Cake
Matthew's Now but Wow! - Grand Crew on Peacock
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:04
I'm Molly, and I'm Matthew,
Molly 0:06
and this is spilled milk, the show where we cook something delicious, eat it all and you can't have
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:10
any. And today we're talking about flourless chocolate cake, that's right, which was a suggested by me, and I can't remember why Me neither. Yeah, have we done just chocolate cake? I think this might be a thing we said we're
Molly 0:25
gonna do. Didn't we do like Texas sheet cake? Or has that been on our list, finding this
Speaker 1 0:30
for a while, and it says Molly's gonna make it? Oh, does Molly know anything about No, okay, this is how I remember it. Yeah. I mean, I don't really remember. I mean, we've done like, layer cakes. I think, did we do layer cakes? I don't even know. Why are we talking about this? Do we even have a show like, is this all been a hallucination?
Molly 0:50
It's been a beautiful dream. Okay, that's true.
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:54
I wondered. I wondered why every week we record on this cloud,
Molly 0:58
yeah. I mean, I wondered why I never remember what we record after the fact. And it's the same way you just forget most of your dreams.
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:08
No, we should keep a dream diary so we know what our past topics are. Yeah, let's do it. All right,
Molly 1:13
all right, by flourless chocolate cake. We want to specify that we're not talking about like lava cakes or molten chocolate,
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:19
yeah, which I think we should do a separate episode on. They're not that different. It's basically the same thing, but, but maybe with a little flour and you under bake it, but let's do a whole separate
Molly 1:29
episode. But the other thing about those is they tend to be single serving, yeah? So this I made, like a full size cake, yeah, yeah, Matthew, where does your memory lane begin?
Matthew Amster-Burton 1:40
Okay, so this was definitely a thing when I was a kid in the 80s. And I have never been a fan of like cake, like sponge cake, so I quickly realized, Oh, if it says flourless chocolate cake, I'm gonna like it. Because, like, I never even liked like chocolate sheet cake, which, hold on, just weird, cause I like chocolate
Molly 2:00
everything. Is it like that you don't like it, or is it that it does nothing for you?
Matthew Amster-Burton 2:05
It's that it does nothing for me, like, it's not like egg salad, where I like, you know, you could chase me down the street with it, and I'd, like, run 100 miles an hour, like a cartoon character, just like, I'd eat it. Like, yeah, okay, okay, it's fluffy. It doesn't taste like much, but a flourless chocolate cake can be like, dense and fudgy,
Molly 2:21
like a brownie, that's right, that's right. And you do, you are pro brownie. I pro very much. Pro Brown. Okay, yes, okay, you know these things were, these flourless chocolate cake things definitely had a big moment. And I'm not sure if it was it the 80s, or was it the early 90s.
Matthew Amster-Burton 2:39
It was both, but especially the 80s, I think. And I also put on here that it used to be often billed as chocolate decadence. I remember this. Remember how everything had, everything was decadent, right? Decadent was the word for, like, anything that had, like, sugar and butter. It tasted good, yeah, but, but yes. Decadence was also, we're gonna, we're going to get to some other, like, over the top, extreme chocolate names by the end of the episode.
Molly 3:05
I can't wait. Yeah. So I think that I encountered this the same way that you did, which was, you know, at the time when it was really, really popular. And then I remember, I think, having a flourless chocolate cake for the first time that didn't seem like cheesy, you know, like the idea of chocolate decadence always feels kind of cheesy, yeah, oh yeah, it even did then. But I remember the first time I encountered one in a restaurant that, to me, was like, synonymous with sophistication, and that was the flourless chocolate cake that the Zuni cafe in San Francisco has served for ages. It's been on the menu since, I think the 1980s they call it gateaux Victor, like victory cake,
Matthew Amster-Burton 3:50
because it has defeated all of the other cakes in, cake to cake. That's right, that's right. Strange, two cakes enter. One cake leaves.
Molly 3:58
Strangely, it's not in the Zuni Cafe cookbook, Molly
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:02
was caging furiously through the cook before we started recording. Like, how? Like, where is this cake?
Molly 4:06
Why isn't it here? You can find it online if you search for gateaux, Victor Zuni cafe. Michael Bauer, who was the longtime San Francisco Chronicle restaurant critic, has written about it the recipes online. Judy Rogers, who was the longtime chef of Zuni cafe and the author of The Zuni Cafe cookbook, she has always attributed the recipe to whatever pastry chef they had at the restaurant in the 80s. However, I could swear that this also originally came from Julia Child somewhere, but I didn't have time to go look in her various cookbooks.
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:46
Yeah, there's a famous Richard sacks one flourless chocolate cake and, like, there just aren't that many different ways to make this. It's fairly standard, although we'll get to one weird recipe.
Molly 4:58
It's kind of like brownies. Yeah? Like, we all, yeah, we have, like, small variations on what we're looking for, but essentially, they don't vary that much,
Matthew Amster-Burton 5:09
right? I also, like you pasted the URL for the for this uni Cafe recipe. We'll put it in the show notes. But the way it broke the line on here, it looks like it says, e cake is part of the URL. Like in the in the 90s, like we stopped eating cake. We started eating e cake. We started calling the old cake snail cake. That's right,
Molly 5:31
anyway, okay, I'll talk about my other sort of Flourless ish cake experience in a minute.
Matthew Amster-Burton 5:38
We should, we should say that like I didn't. I didn't make this clear enough in the agenda that there are also cakes that have just a tiny bit of flour. That's basically the same thing. It's no longer like a gluten free cake, obviously. But in terms of, like, the sort of texture and experience you're going for, there's not a huge difference between, like, two tablespoons of flour and no flour.
Molly 5:58
I think that what we're gonna find right is that a big difference is in how the eggs are treated? Yes, for sure. Okay, all right, let's get to it.
Matthew Amster-Burton 6:07
Okay, so what is this stuff? So first of all, I was pleased and surprised, just like when we did, what was the what was the thing we did recently, it wasn't caprese salad, because that had basically no Wikipedia article. It was something, oh, sausage sandwiches, whereas, like this, has a pretty comprehensive Wikipedia article, and so does flourless chocolate cake. So it is not just a little section in the chocolate cake article. It has its own page that is actually very surprising, right? Yeah. Okay, so it's a chocolate cake made without flour, and the leavening comes from beaten egg whites and sometimes also beating the egg yolks with sugar. However, some recipes forego the whipping or beating and go for more of a ganache, like, texture, okay, and it is a very simple cake. Like, you know, it can be just butter, sugar, chocolate, and what's the fourth thing? Eggs, like, it doesn't need anything other than those four ingredients. There is a lot of like, beating, whisking a double boiler. Ring involved. So I, like, I did get chocolate on a lot of surfaces yesterday when I made this, but it was worth it. Do you have an actual double boiler? No, I put a glass bowl into it, the top of a saucepan that works fine. Did Did your parents have a double boiler? Absolutely. I remember exactly what it looked like, how it was like one, like curve bottom pot that sat in a pot.
Molly 7:23
Hello, totally. If I feel like, if you were someone who cared about food and cooking in the 1980s you acquired a double boiler my parents. Was a copper insert for it was white ceramic with, like this copper band that, you know, attached to the handle
Matthew Amster-Burton 7:43
now is a double boiler, different from a BAM Marie can't like
Molly 7:46
a BAM Marie be also like when you're baking something
Matthew Amster-Burton 7:50
in a water bath. Yeah, that's, that's what I was thinking. Also, I'm not sure though we, you know, we could look this, we'll do a band Marie episode and talk about all the variations. I can't wait to probably a huge Wikipedia article. Great. Okay, all right, listeners, what's the most useless episode we could possibly do? Get in touch. Contact at spilled book podcast.com like, have we done can openers? I think maybe we did. I think we did again. Why am I even asking? We have no memory of anything.
Molly 8:18
Oh, my God. But we're gonna consult our dream journal, and that's gonna fix it all up. So, okay, Matthew, what's the history of this stuff? Is there an origin? Like, oops, I forgot to put the flower in the cake.
Matthew Amster-Burton 8:29
Well, I hate to say it, but that is one of the apocryphal origins. Okay, okay. So first of all, teaser alert, there is going to be an unexpected Capra say crossover. No way. Yes. So, yeah. So someone was trying to make a tomato salad, they accidentally put in chocolate and Okay, so Wikipedia says, and there seems to be, like pretty good evidence for this that the first recorded flourless chocolate cake is called torta tenerina, first recorded in Ferrara, Emilia, Romagna, Italy, in I wrote 1990 but I meant 1900 okay? I mean, it wouldn't be shocking if it was 1900 it wouldn't be it could also be called the queen of Montenegro cake, or Reina Monte Montenegro cake, and it's still commonly found in Ferrara, Italy. And tenerina just means tender. So it's like the tender cake, okay? And as far as I can tell, like, I I didn't find like, any historical recipes. I did look at like modern recipes in Italian, like from Italian sources, and it's basically exactly the same as you would make it today. Okay?
Molly 9:34
That makes sense, because it's not like, I don't know, this is made from ingredients that are really old, right? Once slash ingredients where there's no variation, really. I mean, eggs are eggs, you can't right? Eggs is eggs. Eggs is eggs. Butter is is butter? I mean, with a few, yeah, percentage points of fat differently.
Matthew Amster-Burton 9:53
I definitely like the newest ingredient, like conch, like commercial chocolate, is not, not as old as the other things. But once you have that, yeah, you can make this. So the classic recipe, like, I looked at a bunch of pictures of like, on like, Italian food blogs, and they tend to have, like, a noticeable undercooked patch in the center where it's darker, which looks really appetizing. And like definitely makes it also like an ancestor of, like, the modern molten lava chocolate cake. Yeah, flourless chocolate cake. It's a common Passover dessert because there's no yeast or other leavening ingredients. Torta Caprese is a similar cake from Capri which includes almond flour, which sounds very good. I think I've had
Molly 10:32
it. I have had this too. I found it to be fine. It didn't scratch the same itch.
Matthew Amster-Burton 10:38
I mean, I think Italian desserts are, like a particular thing, like a polenta cake or like a chocolate cake with almond flour, like they are not going for, like what a chocolate decadence. American dessert is going for,
Molly 10:52
well, and they're also not going for what, like a French dessert is going for, or even, like a German or like, Austrian dessert, where I think of like these chocolate cakes that are dense, or, like, ganache type things you just don't see that
Matthew Amster-Burton 11:09
as, no, it's a totally different approach. And, like, not something I usually go for. I have a feeling I've never been to Italy. I have a feeling if I ever went to Italy, I'd be like, Whoa. These desserts are, like, really doing it for me on their home turf, and then I'll come home and forget about them again. Yeah. Oh, so yeah. According to Wikipedia, the Tour de capraes a quote, This cake has a number of myths surrounding its origins, including a baker forgetting to add the flour. Yep, there we go. Stupid bakers. River Cafe has a famous cake called Chocolate nemesis. This is River Cafe in London. In London, have you? You've been there? Nemesis. I had my that's
Molly 11:41
where I had my first ever experience of, like, being moved to tears by I really never you wrote about this. I wrote, like, regrettably, about about that. I'm sure I do not want to reread that essay.
Speaker 1 11:52
Yeah, but did you have the talk? You're like, yes, you do not want to reread that essay. No, I reread it and didn't mention it yet. But anyway, I thought it was I thought it was adorable. It was adorable. Okay, but did you have the chocolate? Now this is, I don't think so. Okay, I don't remember having it. Okay. Food 52 published the recipe. We could pull out the essay and check
Unknown Speaker 12:13
Yeah,
Matthew Amster-Burton 12:16
I'm leaving. Okay. Food, I'll finish the episode myself. Food 52 published the recipe for chocolate. Nemesis. And it is a wacky recipe, really. I kind of want to try it so it contains butter, eggs, sugar, chocolate and a pretty large amount of water, like a cup of water, very strange. You bake it for two hours. And the reviews, of course, are all like, this is the best, moistest cake ever, or this was like a disastrous soup that ruined everything.
Molly 12:45
I have to say that I don't know. I'm inclined to, I would 100% give this a try. I would try it, but only because I trust that food 52 tested it. Yeah, the River Cafe cookbooks are notoriously unreliable when it comes to the quality of recipe writing, like,
Matthew Amster-Burton 13:02
what possessed them to try putting water into this recipe? Like, what a wild
Molly 13:08
idea. You know, Matthew, I have a feeling that somebody's making a chocolate cake and, like, they just
Matthew Amster-Burton 13:12
dumped a whole cup of water they were doing the dishes at the same time.
Molly 13:16
Yeah, that's right, okay. And I will say that the cake that I make probably the most often, or have made the most often over the history of my adulthood, is a version of a flourless chocolate cake. I wrote about it. I wrote the recipe in my first book, a homemade life. It's the final recipe in the book. I call it the winning hearts and minds cake. Did you make this cake for your first wedding, I made this cake for my first wedding. I made, I think, like 20 or 28 of
Matthew Amster-Burton 13:46
them. I hope all of our listeners think this is this bonkers as I do, it is
Molly 13:51
so easy. I mean, it's like baking. It's like making a pan of brownies, and they actually and you didn't have anything else to do, so nothing else to do. No, this, like, really felt like me at the time. Yeah. No, I get it, yeah. The recipe that the winning hearts and minds cake is very closely adapted from comes from a book called je vous du Chou la by Trish de Seine. Trish de Seine.
Matthew Amster-Burton 14:15
So I know Trish descend, because, like, Okay, I just stop and look something up. Because while I was researching this, I came across somebody did a, like, a long, like a classic food blog post where they made like, eight different flourless chocolate cake recipes and ranked them. And Trish descend was number one, and I think Claire saffits his recipe was number two. But I want to, I want to give credit to this blog and link to them. So I'm going to, I'm going to look this up now. Yeah, go ahead.
Molly 14:43
So this book, I bought it in France, like 20 years ago. It's beautiful book. It's published by marabou, and, yeah, it's called je vous du Chau, which means I want chocolate, and it is entirely French language. The cake that I have called the winning hearts and minds cake is closely adapted from. Um, what, what Trish descent calls legato usho, cooler fondant, Natalie. Are you gonna
Matthew Amster-Burton 15:06
say? But yeah, so it's from a blog called the pancake Princess, a bake off blog. Okay, yeah, so she did a flourless chocolate cake Bake Off. I think, I think the one, I think the one she made, was exactly from the book, because I think it did have a tiny bit of flour in it.
Molly 15:19
Okay, okay, well, Trish descent also has a flourless chocolate cake on the exact same page. Maybe, maybe that was it. But yes, so far in need better. So with no flour or mixer or batter, no, it's a mixer.
Matthew Amster-Burton 15:38
Let's No, no, we can, like, I can make mistakes in the kitchen too, like I accidentally didn't put in the flour, the butter, the sugar, the eggs or the chocolate. And this is the lightest cake. Well, I mean, that's what some say. Like, you know, I am wearing clothes. They're just like, we're made by a special tailor, and my cake is light and delicious. You
Molly 16:07
so what I do want to say about this cake, legato, Chocola, fondant, Natalie by Trish de Seine, is, well, there are a number of things to note in this one, you do not separate the egg whites from the yolks. Okay? You basically, you melt the chocolate and the butter together, either in the microwave, which is what I used to do, or now I just do it in a double boiler type thing.
Matthew Amster-Burton 16:31
Yeah, I sometimes, like, wait, wait, let's, let's have a little tangent here. Because, like, I feel the same as you like, sometimes I melt butter in the microwave, but like, it's not really any faster or easier than doing the double boiler. You don't have to wash the pot after you double boil, and you can, you can't overcook it. I agree. I can destroy chocolate in the microwave, and it is gross.
Molly 16:52
You can also cause butter to splatter all over the inside of your
Matthew Amster-Burton 16:56
microwave, yeah. And I feel like an anti microwave guy by any means. I adore
Molly 17:01
my microwave, and I use it every day for reheating foods, yes, but that's why
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:05
you wrote microwave gourmet. Who wrote that? Barbara Kafka,
Molly 17:08
yes. Okay. Anyway, hold on, when I made this cake as a wedding cake, I did use the microwave, and I got sure, like I got it, like, dialed in, I knew exactly how many rounds, like 30 seconds, I would do it. But basically it, it's got an equal weight of chocolate, butter and sugar, 200 grams of each nice. Isn't that nice? Yeah. So, yeah, you like three cup chicken. You melt the chocolate and the butter, you add the sugar, you let it sit for just a minute to make sure that you know you've got, you got it cooled down a little bit. Then you add five whole eggs, and you beat them in, and it looks a little gnarly and curdled for a minute. And you really beat thoroughly by hand, and it starts to like come together and become gorgeous and smooth. And then you add exactly one tablespoon of flour, I usually add a pinch of salt, even though it's not in the recipe. You mix it all up and you bake it for like 25 minutes maybe, and it doesn't rise a lot. I know that you're about to talk about the chocolate cake you made for today. Some of them really rise a lot and then kind of collapse. Yes, which mine mine did the winning hearts and minds. Cake does rise and then collapse a bit, but it's not, I don't know. Maybe some people would feel that it's a big rise and a big collapse, but I can think of bigger rises and collapses,
Matthew Amster-Burton 18:33
like the Roman Empire, America, like, you know,
Molly 18:37
stuff like that, the Democratic Party. Wait, I'm not dying, yeah? But the the most important thing I think about the winning hearts and minds cake is it truly is better the next day, yeah? Or if you can't make it the next day, at least make it well in advance. Like, I don't know, I'm not somebody who likes desserts served warm, if you could eat them at room temperature. So you don't like a like a warm chocolate chip I do not want a warm chocolate chip cookie. I mean, I'll eat it, but I would rather have it at room temp. And I feel the same way about like brownies, and I really think the texture of these cakes needs time to settle.
Matthew Amster-Burton 19:14
Yeah, no. I'm glad I made this yesterday, like I made it yesterday, just for for convenience sake, but I think it is better today, probably, weirdly, I like a warm chocolate chip cookie. I don't like a warm brownie, so I don't know.
Molly 19:27
One thing I want to add too is so that one tablespoon of flour. I've never tried leaving it out, but I have replaced it with a tablespoon of cocoa Oh, which there's some cocoa powder in the one eye, almost, almost indistinguishable from the flour version. So I've made a gluten free version just using nice a tablespoon
Matthew Amster-Burton 19:47
of cocoa, yeah? And, like, the good thing about serving it the next day is, like, you can make it, then you can propose marriage to someone, yes, and then you're ready for that wedding the next day. That's right, yeah, I would put it. It on Craigslist, like, who wants to marry this guy?
Molly 20:03
Cake. So what I love about these cakes is, and especially the one that I make, is I love the little crackly top you get to love that you also get on a good brownie, the winning hearts and minds cake, ideally, if it's baked well, will have, like, a light ganache texture. It should be very light and velvety, but fully cooked through. Yeah? To me, it's like a perfect brownie.
Matthew Amster-Burton 20:32
Yeah. So, like, what? So, what is it? Choose this versus a brownie that kind of like, went down that road mentally, because, like, I love brownies, and like I do, I did enjoy the cake we made today, but I don't think I would ever pick it over a brownie, which is also easier to make. I think it looks more festive.
Molly 20:50
Honestly, you could make a winning hearts and minds cake in a square pan and just
Matthew Amster-Burton 20:54
tell people it's probably a brownie, but would they still marry you? I think they would marry me. Like, literally, always you, yeah, but like, I have, like, more foibles.
Molly 21:03
So one thing I like about the winning hearts and minds cake is it can have this fully wait.
Matthew Amster-Burton 21:08
I just now realize it's wham cake. Oh, I never got that. You never noticed this. No, wow,
Molly 21:15
wake me up before I totally go go to the wedding, right? So it's got this lovely, velvety texture in the middle, without being undercooked, right? And without it being like heavy. It's not like the inside of a ganache truffle, right? That is dense, yeah, this is velvety.
Matthew Amster-Burton 21:34
I've always felt that inside a ganache truffle, it's too dark to read,
Molly 21:39
but I think of that being different from a brownie, in that it is like a finer texture than a brownie. When I make brownies from scratch, I make a version of the Katharine Hepburn recipe, which I think has either a quarter or a half cup of flour. So it creates a texture that even if it is a little softer in the middle than it is at like, the outer edges, it still has a crumb to it, yes, whereas, I think a properly baked winning hearts and minds cake doesn't really have much of a crumb. It's not that it's wet, it just doesn't crumble. Okay, do you know what I mean?
Matthew Amster-Burton 22:18
I do know what you mean. And now, now I kind of wish I'd also made the winning hearts. I mean, I wasn't gonna make two cakes, but it would be interesting to try them side by side with the one I made.
Molly 22:25
Well, you wanna know what's really stupid is that I just made one on Friday and still have like, a quarter of it on my counter, and I didn't even bring it. Matthew, what was I thinking?
Matthew Amster-Burton 22:35
Okay, wait, I have a question. What is going on in this photo in the book where someone has, like, cut a fjord out of this
Molly 22:41
cake. I have no idea. This is the Trish descend book. It's got a weird photo of this cake.
Matthew Amster-Burton 22:47
Yeah. Like, if I, if I, like, made a cake and someone cut this slice out of it, I would be like, I'm living with a psychopath.
Molly 22:54
I do think it's kind of pleasing, though, because if you So, in this picture, she's baked the ghetto fondant in a square pan. And I do find it tricky, because look, if she had just cut a little square like a brownie, she would only have the texture of this corner or this part or whatever, whereas she's cut this kind of long rectangular slice, and it's going to give her a lot of texture.
Matthew Amster-Burton 23:20
Okay, no, you're right. I mean, no, I would like to eat that slice. It's seeing what's left behind. It does look disturbing the cake that's been like notched, like they took a biopsy.
Molly 23:29
Yeah, that's totally what it looks like, like a core sample.
Matthew Amster-Burton 23:33
Did you may have said this a minute ago, God, I wasn't paying attention, but did you come up with the name winning hearts and minds cake?
Molly 23:39
My friend Kate came up with it because we were really good friends at the time that I first started making this case. Okay, I was doing a kind of a lot of dating around that time, like the most, the most dating I think I've ever done in my life, in a compressed period of time. It was like one year, and I dated like four different people or something anyway, and for each of them, like, I cooked a meal at some point. And what I always made this cake. So Kate called it my like, winning hearts and minds cake, because, you know, trying to win hearts and minds, yeah, and
Matthew Amster-Burton 24:13
other things, all right. So I made a recipe recommended by producer Abby. It's Allison Romans, fallen chocolate cake. I could not find a non pay walled version of this, so we'll link to the Epicurious recipe. I'm handing the recipe over to Molly in paper form, and it is really fun watching it fall. After you take it out of the oven, it comes out like domed and cracked, and then it falls. And the topping is mascarpone whipped cream, which I slightly under whipped, but it was still good. So it does occupy a weird middle ground between cake and Brownie. So like, I like the I like the flavor a lot. I love the topping. I'm not 100% sold on the texture.
Molly 24:53
It's interesting the texture, it's not wet, yeah, I also would not call it velvety. It has. Has, like, a certain density to it, like, but it's not dense. It's still pretty No, it's still pretty airy. It's pretty airy. But it my comment as I was nearing the end of the slice was my tongue was getting tired, yeah,
Matthew Amster-Burton 25:13
which is, which is weird, because, like, it would be the flower that could make it chewy, but it is, it is kind of chewy.
Molly 25:19
The other thing is, is I found the texture to be it really needed some whipped cream as a foil, yeah? Definitely, because there is something dry, is not the right word, yeah, what I mean, I we're lacking the right adjectives. Is there one in Japanese for this texture? Probably, I do feel that this is a category of cake where we need a really, really big box of adjectives,
Speaker 1 25:45
exactly like, you know, the people who wrote culinary artistry is that the name of the book, oh, come up with, like, a wheel a cake. Wheel of cake. Wasn't that Michael ruleman, and he wasn't Michael ruleman. Oh, no, culinary artistry. That was a different that was a couple. I've had dinner with them one time I did too.
Molly 26:03
How could I have forgotten who they are? That book was, is a really
Matthew Amster-Burton 26:07
great book. I know as soon as, as soon as I look it up, we're gonna be like, Oh, them. Karen, yep. Karen, okay. Culinary Arts, Andrew dorenberg and Karen. Page, there we go. Yep, 1996
Molly 26:17
classic. Yeah, a real classic. Oh, I also should say that that this phrase, that chocolate decadence, is in the Trish descend book, like a gateaux la fondant. You'll see it often. You'll see these cakes sold by the slice in French bakeries, and they're often just called like a fondant or chocolate, which means, like a melted, melted, melty cake of chocolate. And I don't know if those are always Flourless, they may or may not be, but the idea is kind of the same. It's like a French almost like a French brownie.
Matthew Amster-Burton 26:54
Yeah, Brownie. Never mind anyway,
Molly 27:01
but hold on, yeah, I don't think I would make this this, yeah, recipe that you made again, yeah, I hope Abby doesn't listen to this. I hope Abby, Abby, don't listen. No, no. It's not that. It's not good,
Matthew Amster-Burton 27:16
yeah? Like, I want to try yours next. I'm really sorry
Molly 27:19
that I was too stupid to grab the last couple slices off. I was
Matthew Amster-Burton 27:24
over at silence W's house yesterday. I mentioned I was doing this episode, and she said, did you make the winning hearts and minds cake, or did you reject it because it has a little flour in it? I said, Yeah, I didn't. I didn't make it. She said, she's made it many times. Yeah. Another thing I really has also been married twice, so probably that's related. It is related.
Molly 27:41
One thing that I'm also noticing about this fallen chocolate cake recipe is, I don't know, it requires a lot of measuring and it requires more ingredients, yeah, and yeah. I think, I think part of the charm for me of a cake like this is, I don't know, I just really love that it's almost like a pound cake in terms of the ingredients, like the 200 grams each of chocolate, butter and sugar, delights me. Yeah, that is delightful. Anything else we need to discuss about these guys?
Matthew Amster-Burton 28:11
I don't think so. I think maybe for our next retreat, let's go to, let's go to Ferrara, Italy, okay, and try the original and then, and then go to Capri Of course, and try the tortoise, Caprese the caprese salad. We'll meet the king of Egypt. And like a like an old, dead Italian guy.
Molly 28:29
That sounds right, all right. So Matthew in general, how do you feel about like, Would you ever make a flower list? Have you you had you ever made one before? Would you feel like
Matthew Amster-Burton 28:39
I maybe have made it once before, I would, yeah, I would make it again. Like, maybe, if I wanted, like, what would I make if I wanted to serve something like, chocolatey and like, but more festive or fancy than brownies? Probably something like this, yeah, yeah. Or I might just do hot fudge sundaes, yeah, yeah, that too. Those are good. Those are really good. But I'm glad, I'm glad we did this. I'm glad I suggested this idea. For some reason, I'm
Molly 29:04
glad you did too, and I'm sorry that I am a little bit stupid
Matthew Amster-Burton 29:08
today. No, no, no, no, I was giving you a hard time, but no, I'm
Molly 29:13
a little bit stupid every day. Hey, Matthew, we've got some spilled mail. You. Foreign This one comes from listener Allison hosts Matthew and Molly. If you're not tired of hearing about Italian sodas, I must tell you about my own memory lane. My husband and I are more soda people than cocktail people, so at our wedding, we created our own signature sodas at the bar rather than signature cocktails, we spent many weekends crafting our very own fruity sodas and cream sodas to represent each of us through sugary bubbly beverages. And while we certainly had many misses, maybe mimicking your Italian soda experiences, we finally created some real winners. It was maybe risky to drink orange and. Blue sodas in a white dress and a white Tux jacket, but we walked away stain free and with a ton of extra Torani syrups. Very best listener, Allison,
Matthew Amster-Burton 30:10
I love that one of their winners was blue right?
Molly 30:15
So would that be like blue raspberry or something?
Matthew Amster-Burton 30:17
I hope so. I love blue raspberry things. Blue raspberry Slurpee is probably my favorite. That's a delightful story, and it stays on the wedding theme. Like, I assume the way she met her husband was winning hearts and minds. Well, I think by like, by like, posting a picture of herself with a bunch of tarani syrups. Say, like, like, I visit my this is, I don't think anyone's gonna think this is funny, as I do, but I love this idea of like, like, putting it out there, like on Craigslist, like, I've got this one dessert or something, like, will you marry me tomorrow?
Molly 30:48
I mean, very efficient. Yes,
Matthew Amster-Burton 30:50
I'm all about efficiency. That's my new thing. Yeah, okay, all right. Do I have a now? But wow, you do. Yes, I do. You so
Matthew Amster-Burton 31:05
Watson, I have been really enjoying watching a now canceled sitcom, but there's two seasons of it, grand crew on peacock. It does not stray at all from the like friends formula, in the sense that I was, I was kind of nervous that that, like there was going to be a big premise for this sitcom. The premise is a group of friends has to find a new bar, and their new bar is a wine bar. So they start getting into wine, and that's it like this. So they sit around and drink wine and, like, talk about stuff, and it stars Nicole Beyer, Carl tart, and some of my other favorite funny people
Molly 31:39
isn't Nicole Beyer. The person who she she hosted a cooking show. Yes, she hosts,
Matthew Amster-Burton 31:44
okay, yeah, that's the food connection. She is very, very funny. And this is, this is a very sweet and funny show. Yeah, I don't even know the names offhand of any of the other people in it, although Colton done, just guest starred, and I think he's one of the funniest people. Yeah, it's just a cute, delightful little show. Grand crew on peacock.
Molly 32:01
Fantastic. Our producer is Abby circatella, and you know, obviously she's not gonna listen to this episode.
Matthew Amster-Burton 32:08
No, that's okay. So we can say anything about her at this point, you can rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts,
Molly 32:13
and you can chat with other spilled milk listeners on Reddit, at reddit.com/r/everything,
Matthew Amster-Burton 32:20
spilled milk. Yeah. How do you make your flowers Flourless clock, make your flourless chocolate clocks? Do you whip it? Do you whip it? Good. Do you do you put water in
Molly 32:29
it? Do you find that if you spin the hands fast enough, the egg whites will get stiff,
Matthew Amster-Burton 32:33
or if you spin the other way, do you find that you go back in time? All right, thanks for listening to spilled milk. I'm Julius Caesar because I went back in time. I'm Cleopatra. I knew you were gonna say Cleopatra. Yes, see you next time.
Matthew Amster-Burton 32:59
Hello listeners. It is host Matthew here with a very important addendum to the flourless chocolate cake episode. Watson and I tasted the Fallen chocolate cake straight out of the fridge the following day, and it was like, scientifically speaking, 10.5 times better than at room temperature. Like the texture was fudgier, the flavor was more balanced. So I'm switching to saying, like, I recommend this. This Allison Roman recipe that producer Abby suggested, just stick it in the fridge, put the topping on, stick it in the fridge overnight, cut yourself a slice for breakfast, maybe a midnight snack, whatever. Don't let it get above like 42 degrees Fahrenheit, and I think you'll be really happy. Yeah.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai