Claire Saffitz's Flourless Chocolate Cake might just be my new favourite
Why yes, I do have her books! And you can find the recipe on p.65 on Dessert Person. These books are gorgeous hardcover and they're bound beautifully; great for your coffee table, amazing on your shelf, or fantastic for display in your kitchen too.
This cake is really interesting because the first thing it tells you to do is to oil your cake pan and then coat the sides with sugar so the flourless cake has something to 'grip' onto when it rises. It's sorta like adding nucleation sites with a mentos and coke experiment (okay, maybe it's not like that at all, but it's what came to mind when I read it).
Then you'd use a double boiler to melt your chocolate, oil, water, and RUM mixture. The recipe says you can skip on it or use amaretto (which I know few people have), but dark rum or a brandy is fine.
GO WITH RUM. I don't drink, but I love cooking with rum. Get a dark rum too, not a white rum, and just go ham with it. Three tablespoons? Nah, not in this house.
After which, it's time to whip your egg whites up and then slowly add in the sugar until it's beautiful and glossy. That entire process was strangely calming and hypnotic. The egg whites fluff up and then change into a completely different texture as you slowly feed in the sugar.
You'd do the standard fold into the cake to prevent smooshing out all the air bubbles, and that's actually where I find the hardest part of this cake to be.
I know you're meant to fold it until it JUST incorporates, but even when I thought I had it done perfectly, parts of the bottom were slightly uneven. Which is fine, I got it done right in the end, but then I was slightly worried I had overmixed it.
Claire has repeatedly iterated that folding in beaten egg whites is her favourite part of baking as it makes these beautiful streaks of colour.
I, err, didn't add enough sugar to the top so it didn't crack or caramelize like a creme brulee. Here's a photo of what the 'wave' cake should look like. Also it rises a lot, so if you've got a small oven (like I do), you really need to be careful the top doesn't get too close to the heating elements, otherwise it will burn. You can see mine did burn slightly.
Taste wise?
This cake is AMAZING. It's tremendous. When my partner had the first bite, she just had this beautiful smile split across her face and she couldn't stop smiling. My flatmates were equally spellbound. The almond meal/flour absorbs a lot of the liquid chocolate and rum mixture and there's a soft, soft grittiness which matches with the light and fluffy texture from the eggs. You have to try it to believe it.
It's...it's just great. My only regret is that a lot of my friends are overseas and I can't share this with them.
I can't recommend this one enough. It's not too sweet, and it's not decadently icky where every bite makes you feel like you've had enough--no, this is a cake for the ages, this is a cake you want to devour and when you're done, you'd be looking at the restaurant menu asking yourself if you'd be willing to pay for a second serving.
This is THAT kind of cake. This is one you should make.
(or just come over, I've got extras)