Flourless Caramel Chocolate Cake Bars
These flourless caramel chocolate cake bars are my homemade gluten-free version of Cadbury’s Caramel Cake Bars. This is a very easy recipe. As I’m using shop-bought salted caramel sauce. Because I have a tendency to constantly taste whatever I’m cooking. And that’s a definite no-no when caramelising sugar. I’m just too distracted at the moment to trust myself not to seriously burn the mouth off me. And our healthcare workers have enough to deal with right now. So probably best to be extra careful not to be an idiot at the moment.
I’m not saying I’m going to succeed with that resolution. But I am going to try.
So yes, this is very very simple. It uses the flourless chocolate sponge from the Black Forest Gateau, baked altogether in one rectangular dish and for twice as long.
To be honest, the reason I ended up baking it for that long was because I finally decided to properly the tidy the place here and forgot about the cake. But luckily I happened to wander back into the kitchen and thought “oh, what a lovely chocolatey smell… Oh no!” And as it turns out that was the perfect amount of baking time.
Yeah. Seriously distracted…
So if you’re listening to all these stories of people who are losing weight, gaining new skills or keeping their home in perfect tip-top ship-shape condition… Well, good for them. Personally, I’m eating all around me. Until yesterday my home was in a heap. And I think I’m forgetting basic skills at this stage.
But I do have a eight more gorgeously gluten-free caramel chocolate cake bars to eat. So all in all it’s not so bad here.
Oh yeah, just to let you know, I froze one of these last night. After defrosting for between 1 – 2 hours on the counter top it was as fresh and tasty as the rest.
Ingredients
- 6 large eggs
- small pinch of salt
- 150g caster sugar
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla bean paste or two teaspoons of vanilla extract
- 50g cocoa powder, sieved, if you are not a fan of dark chocolate use 40g of cocoa
- 200g salted caramel sauce, I used a store-bought jar but you could use this excellent recipe instead.
- 200g milk chocolate
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180 C. Grease and line a rectangular baking tin or dish.
- Separate the eggs. Place the egg white in clean grease-free bowl with the small pinch of salt. Whisk until they are stiff and forming gentle peaks.
- Whisk the egg yolks, vanilla and sugar together in a large bowl until they have turned a pale buttery colour. Fold in a spoonful of the egg white to loosen the mix a bit. Next fold in the sieved cocoa powder until it is all well combined. If you are finding the mixture too thick to fold easily, add in more of the egg white. When the cocoa is fully mixed in fold in the rest of the egg white.
- Pour the cake batter into the greased and lined baking tin and bake for 30 - 40 minutes. The cake should rise to almost twice its height during baking. The top will be dry but still soft when it's done. Take out and allow to cool for about 20 minutes.
- The cake will collapse during this time. Don't worry this is normal. The cake will still be warm but no longer hot. Turn out onto a wire tray (or oven-dish grill will do in a pinch). Now let the cake cool completely. You remove it from the tin so that the sponge will be less moist.
- When the cake has cooled completely cut into rectangles. Melt 60g of the milk chocolate. I find the easiest way to melt chocolate is in microwave. Melt for 30 second, stir and repeat, until it's all melted. Spoon about a teaspoonful of the melted chocolate over each of the bars so that each are thinly covered on that side with chocolate. Allow the chocolate to cool completely. Do this on the counter-top if you can because the sponge will probably go moist in the fridge and you don't want this. It takes about an hour or so for the chocolate to be completely hard.
- Get a large sheet of baking paper and place the chocolate bars on this so the hardened chocolate bit is on the bottom. Spread a generous layer of the salted caramel sauce on top of each of the bars. Melt the rest of the chocolate and spoon over each of the bars. I wish I could tell you a not-very-messy way to do this - but I can't. It's messy. But it's worth it. Let the bars cool on baking paper, hardened-side down, until all the chocolate has hardened.
- Once the bars have hardened you can store them in an air-tight container on the counter-top or in the fridge. I'm sorry I don't know how long they stay good. But you can freeze them at this stage and defrost as needed. They take between 1 - 2 hours to defrost on the counter-top.
- Enjoy with a cup of black coffee. So good!
