Flourless Cream Cheese Chocolate Marble Cake

There were a lot of specifications for what I needed from this cake.
1. I was making it for someone else who is not a crazy hippie alternative eater like myself, and I didn’t want to buy flour
2. I needed to be able to make it a few days ahead of time
3. I needed to be able to transport it easily
4. I wanted it to be impressive, but not too impressive 😉
5. I didn’t want it to be something I’d already made (duh) otherwise I would have made this flourless chocolate cake from last year – so good!
Enter this recipe from Fine Cooking which completely fit the bill!

Make the light part:
– Whip 8oz of cream cheese until smooth
– Whip in 2/3c sugar, 1 egg, and 1tsp vanilla

Make the dark part:
– Melt 10oz of bittersweet chocolate and 5oz of butter (or if you’re like me and inadvertently ate half the bag of chocolate chips without quite realizing what you wee doing, you can supplement with a couple ounces of unsweetened baking chocolate – or probably anything else – it ended up being a bit richer and chocolatyer I’m sure, but no complaints here! And also I only used 4oz of butter – I just couldn’t make myself add more than a stick! And again, it was fine) I melted all of this in a bowl over simmering water, which is my version of a double-boiler. Mix until smooth and set it aside to cool a little while you:
– Beat 3 eggs, 1/3c sugar, 1tbsp bourbon (or they say rum or espresso, or anything else delicious I’m sure – maybe amaretto?), 1tsp vanilla, and a pinch of salt until thick and frothy (they say ~3 min on med-high mixer speed – whatever my immersion blender whisk attachment was able to do was fine too)
– Slowly mix in the chocolate until just smooth

Assembly:
– Lightly grease a 9″ cake pan and put parchment paper in the bottom
– Pour half the dark batter into the pan
– Spoon the light and dark batters on top in big dollops in a random pattern. I think probably the bigger the dollops the better – they look like they may have done it in about 10 total, whereas I think I did it in about 20. And I think theirs is prettier, but mine is pretty enough!
– Take a knife and swirl through the dollops to create a pretty design. I did a vertical-horizontal pattern, but you could do anything – just don’t over-mix
– Bake at 300*f for ~40 minutes, until 2 inches from the side is still gooey but not runny (they caution not to overcook)
– Let cool on a rack for ~an hour

Ok, now you need to decide what you want to do with it, because I almost completely destroyed this cake with all my indecision, and luckily it was surprisingly forgiving!
– To loosen the cake from the pan, turn it almost on it’s side and gently tap the edge of the pan on the counter, rotating until you can tell it’s loose – this works surprisingly well!
– If you are serving it right away, you will want to turn it out onto a plate, sprinkle the underside with cocoa (apparently this makes it easier to serve) and then flip it back onto your serving plate. When I attempted this, I turned the cake out onto a wooden cutting board and gently rubbed a lot of cocoa into the underside. When I flipped it back onto a serving plate, some of the light batter stuck to the board and I had to do my best to fix the top so it looks nice again. Not sure if this was because I’d rubbed it a little or because of the board or just because it’s sticky, but be careful!!
– If you are planning to freeze it (apparently it will defrost in 2 hours at room temperature and be perfect, which is what I ultimately have decided to do) flip it onto a plate or board covered with plastic wrap (or I used a cut-open produce bag – we’ll see how that goes) and then cover the underside with the plastic, and I just ended up putting it back into a clean cake pan to freeze and then transport – easy! (Except if you’d already let it sit on a plate in your fridge overnight before you decided to wrap it in plastic… the cake ended up sticking to the plate, so when I tried to flip it into plastic and remove the cake, I ended up breaking it! Luckily I was able to put it back together, and the top has the swirly design and it’s pretty sticky, so you can’t really tell that I broke it, but man! So yeah, decide what you want to do in advance!)

Super dense, super decadent, super dangerous. Definitely licked all of the bowls like I was 6. You can freeze and refreeze so you don’t HAVE to eat it all at the same time (…good luck with that)