Simple to make, and a real crowd pleaser. All it takes is a few simple ingredients, some standard kitchen tools with a minimum of effort. This has to be the all time best chocolate cake ever!

Ingredients:

One pound of good quality semisweet or bittersweet chocolate. If you're buying chips instead of bars, get two bags as standard bags of chips are only twelve ounces. You need a full pound! My favorite is Ghirardelli 60% cacao bittersweet baking chips.
2 sticks of unsalted butter. Note: the higher the butterfat content, the better
2 to 4 tablespoons of your favorite coffee liqueur (or orange, or rum, or, or, or...)
8 large eggs - cold from the fridge is best
1 quart of hot but not boiling water
1 quart of boiling water

That's it!

Instructions:

Preheat your over to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. If your oven cooks hotter or colder, use a thermometer until the temp is correct as the temp needs be exact with this cake.

Fill a large pot with around a quart of water and a kettle with the same and begin to heat it. Important: You only want the kettle water to boil, not the water in the large pot! Line a springform pan bottom with a round piece of parchment paper. Grease the sides of the pan with butter and wrap the bottom half of the pan (on the outside) in at least two layers of aluminum foil. Dice your butter and keep it cold. About twenty pieces out of the two sticks is small enough. If using a bar of chocolate instead of chips, chop your bar into small pieces of relatively even size.

Take the cold eggs out of the refrigerator and break them into a mixing bowl and whisk. After five minutes or so, you should have a foamy volume of eggs about twice as large as when they started (about one quart).

Place a larger, heat-resistant bowl on top of your large pot of not boiling water. Place both the chocolate and the butter into the bowl. This arrangement is used as a double-boiler to prevent heat damage to the chocolate. If you have a legitimate double-boiler, by all means use it! Stir the mixture gently and very occasionally as it melts. Your target temperature is between 110 and 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Be sure to stir before taking the temperature and to keep the tip of the thermometer off the bottom of the bowl. Once the desired temperature is reached, remove the entire bowl from the pot, place it on a trivet or other heat resistant item and shut off the burner.

I warn you now: This next step is easily the most important step to successfully making this cake. So follow it closely.

The egg foam needs to be folded into the chocolate mixture, one third at a time, as gently as is possible.

Again, as gently as is possible.

Gently.

Are you going to be gentle?

You should be.

The key to this entire cake coming together properly is the maintenance of the air bubbles in the egg foam. If you mistreat the foam, pour it all in at once and go at it with a hand mixer you will end up with a rather nasty batch of chocolate jerky treats. Think senile grandmother fudge with a light dusting of garden dirt.

So you will be gentle.

Right?

Gently add one third of the egg foam to the bowl containing the chocolate mixture. Gently fold the egg foam into the chocolate. When the foam is fully incorporated, gently add the next third and gently fold it in. Continue being gentle with the final third...

If you weren't gentle the gods of baking will smite you and make your cake taste like a delicate combination of coffee grounds and cat litter. You have been warned!

With your fully assembled cake batter at the ready: Scrape the batter into the springform pan. Make sure the top is reasonably flat so it doesn't look weird when it comes out of the oven.

Place the loaded springform gently into a baking dish/roaster/broiler tray. Pour your boiling water into the baking dish, not the springform. You want at least an inch of water in the dish. This is called a water bath and is commonly used in baking.

Place the entire assembly gently in the oven (I swear that's the last gently...) to bake.

Your baking time will depend on the diameter of the pan you used. An 8" pan will run about 24 minutes while a 9" will run about 20 minutes. Either way, the key is to remove the cake when the internal temperature is 140 degrees Fahrenheit, then (not sooner or later) remove the springform from the water bath and place it on a cooling rack.

Here comes the hard part.

Allow the cake to cool on the rack to room temperature. Pout, but don't stomp your feet as this cake falls very easily. Then place the cake (covered) into the the refrigerator for at least twelve hours. Yes, I know. You spent all this time prepping, whisking, baking and being gentle and now you can't even have a piece of cake???

Trust me. If you taste this thing as soon as it hits room temperature, you will want to throw it in the garbage. Imagine eating a used espresso puck. It's not quite that bad, but it is very shocking. Even if you're one of those 'hardcore' dark chocolate people, this is the kind of cake that needs some time to mellow. Perhaps it helps to know that, in the five day refrigerator lifespan of this cake, it only gets better with time. When I serve serve this to our dinner club, I give it a full 24 hour mellow in the fridge before I even consider foisting it on my friends.

That being said, once the requisite mellow time has completed, this cake is insanely good.

To serve:

Unpack the cake from the springform and foil about a half hour ahead of serving time. Invert the cake onto a sheet of something that isn't sticky (waxpaper or parchment) so that you can remove the parchment round from the bottom. Flip the cake back over onto the serving dish. If you are so inclined you can dust your cake with some powdered sugar, cocoa or fruit. I personally forgo the sugar/cocoa and go with a single raspberry and a mint leaf per slice. Cutting the cake with a hot knife is beneficial and makes for a cleaner piece. You can use a regular kitchen knife run under hot water and dried before cutting too.

Serves as few as you deem necessary to enjoy the most awesome cake you've ever eaten by yourself when you need it, but a 9" cake is supposed to serve 16.

Do keep in mind that it would be a calorically bad idea to scarf the whole thing by yourself on a lonely Saturday night... Something I am guilty of on at least one occasion lol. Who can resist?!!!

ps...I stole this recipe from my sister in law before she was my sister in law and she still loves me! Now that's love!

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