For chocolate lovers who don’t like their cake too sweet and appreciate the intense bitter chocolate flavours coming through, you’ll adore this layered cake by Patrick Roger, Meilleur Ouvrier de France.
Using a mixer, whisk the egg whites, adding the caster sugar gradually until you have firm peaks. Add the egg yolk and continue to mix.
Fold in the flour with a large spatula and add the sifted cocoa powder. Gently melt the butter in a saucepan and mix into the batter with the hazelnuts.
Pour into a rectangular mould (I used a silicone rectangular cake mould) and bake 30 mins at 160°C. (I found with my oven that I needed to bake it for 40 minutes at this temperature).
When cool, cut the biscuit into 3 slices horizontally. (As you can see, I didn't cut them as precisely as Patrick Roger did and regretted this afterwards!)
For the syrup: In a saucepan, boil the above ingredients and scrape out the vanilla seeds from the pods.
Using a brush, cover each layer with syrup.
For the Ganache: Boil the cream with the honey, and pour onto the broken chocolate bits and whisk gently. Add the butter. Mix using a hand blender.
Cover the biscuit layers with the ganache, one on top of the other. Leave to rest for 30 mins then cover the cake with cocoa powder.
Using a stencil, dust with icing sugar to decorate.
Keyword French chocolate cake, moist bittersweet chocolate cake, patrick roger chocolate cake