Nigella's Flourless Chocolate Lime Cake with Margarita Cream

A new blog post at last! Unfortunately, I've been having trouble finding the time to sit down with my laptop lately what with visits from family, upcoming trips and birthdays and various other things that come under that general heading called "life".  But I just had to share this fabulous recipe from Nigella's most recent book Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home that, like so many, I had been wanting to try for ages.

It's a well know fact that chocolate and lime sit very happily together in recipes as I'd previously proved with Nigella's Chocolate Key Lime Pie - a triumph of flavour combinations.  This recipe takes similar flavours and mixes them up to make a delicious, flourless chocolate cake.  This cake has plenty of chocolate and eggs and a small amount of ground almonds in place of the flour. These combine to form a rather runny cake batter which transforms into a rich, moist but still light cake. The lime juice adds a citrusy edge that reminded me of a Chocolate Marmalade cake that I've made a number of times.

The thing that really takes this cake to the next level though is the Margarita Cream that you can serve with it. Lime juice, Cointreau, Tequila and icing sugar are added to cream and beaten to produce something that is nothing short of heavenly.  The usual rich, heavy cream is transformed into something light, fragrant and utterly delicious. As Nigella suggests, this could easily be served as dessert in it's own right with just a biscuit or two on the side.

The whole thing was very easy to put together. If making it for a dinner party the cake can be made several hours, or even a day in advance and the cream takes just 5 minutes to whisk together before serving.

You can find the recipe for both the cake and the cream on Nigella's website here and I urge you to try it!