♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - This week on Milk Street, we're entering the world of the French pastry chef.

We start with bête noire, a dessert, which is a flourless chocolate cake with orange and bourbon, and then a fabulous recipe for gâteau nantais, which is a French almond rum cake.

So stay tuned as we make great recipes from the French baking repertoire.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

- For 25 years, Consumer Cellular's goal has been to provide wireless service that helps people communicate and connect.

We offer a variety of no-contract plans, and our U.S.-based customer service team can help find one that fits you.

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♪ ♪ - You know, you have to love the French, if for no other reason because of the French language.

You know, bête noire is a term for something annoying, or bêtise is something silly.

But bête noire is also the name of this great chocolate cake.

It's a flourless chocolate cake and it has a secret, which is there's a sugar syrup is part of the basic cake, which completely changes the texture, right?

- Indeed it does, and it is really amazing.

It's sort of a new technique that I was not familiar with.

But the addition of the sugar syrup, rather than just sugar, really does add a lot to the texture of this cake, and it makes it really, really silky and smooth, and custard-y, and it's amazing.

So, to start with, we have 12 ounces of bittersweet chocolate, plus four ounces of semisweet chocolate, finely chopped.

And we liked a combination of the chocolates.

It just gave us a deeper, more complex chocolate flavor.

And also we have eight tablespoons of butter that have been chopped up into small pieces.

And if you wouldn't mind just stirring that a little bit.

- Can I just take a piece first?

- No.

- No?

- (laughs) Well, now it won't work.

- It's good chocolate.

Now I've thrown the ratios completely off.

- All off.

We have to start over.

- I'm mixing this together?

- Just give it a little mix, yup.

Just so the butter is evenly dispersed into the chocolate, and you'll see why we're doing that.

- Okay.

- All right, that's great.

Okay, now we're gonna go on to the exciting part of this recipe, and instead of just making a plain simple syrup, we decided take it a step further and add more depth and complexity and flavor to this cake.

We're going to make the caramel, and then we're going to turn the caramel into a syrup, and then we're going to use that to melt the chocolate.

- Okay.

- It's fantastic.

So here's... we have one orange.

I'm just gonna peel this into long strips.

And whenever you're zesting citrus, you want to make sure you're just getting that top... outer layer, the orange layer, and not the white part underneath.

Because the white part tastes bitter and the top part has all the essential oils that we want.

Okay, I'm just going to set those aside.

Just going to cut this in half.

Now I'm going to juice this.

Try not to get... (laughs) - Well, I've, I've just been juiced.

- (laughing) I'm so sorry.

- Just don't put me in the pot, will you?

- Well, the good news is we're getting a lot of juice out of it.

So now I'm gonna measure three tablespoons of this juice into our saucepan.

- Well, I have a couple tablespoons here, you could... - Yeah, just wring out your... (chuckles) ...wring out your apron if you don't mind.

At least you're wearing an apron.

And now, with what's left in the measuring cup, I'm going to go ahead and add another wonderful ingredient we both know and love very well.

- We do.

- This is a half a cup of bourbon.

And then I'm just gonna add enough water to bring this up to one cup total.

It's important to have the exact amount of water to loosen our caramel so that the syrup has the right consistency for our cake.

Back to our saucepan, I'm gonna go ahead and add a three-quarter cup of sugar, and then we have three tablespoons of whole black peppercorns, which seems like a little bit of an unusual ingredient, but it really works, it adds a nice savory edge, and a little bit of spiciness and zestiness to the cake.

I'm gonna go ahead and add these strips.

Turn the heat on to medium-high.

(pilot clicks) And I'm gonna swirl the pan a little.

The goal here is to moisten all the sugar.

You don't want to stir it at this point when you're making a caramel.

All right, you can see all the sugar is now dissolved.

We want to let this keep going until it's a deep amber color, and when it's ready, you'll also hear the peppercorn start to pop.

This usually takes about four to five minutes, and you want to swirl it occasionally so that it does cook evenly.

You can see that it's starting to change color.

- What, now, wait a minute, now, when you're doing this, and it's all foamy... - Right?

- How do you see the color easily?

- You know how I tell is I look for a gradient.

It gets a little bit darker on the edges.

And you can compare that to what's in the center.

And that's how I can see it's changing color.

You can also smell it.

You can smell the caramel.

- But my question is, you're looking at foam.

- Right.

- You're not looking at a clear syrup.

- No, you're not, there is definitely foaming.

It will settle down as it gets ready.

But also, are you hearing that?

- Yes, I just heard a pop.

- Uh-huh, that is the sound we're looking for.

and you can see now, in the corner, how dark it is... - And you can smell it.

- And so we are done.

- And you can smell it, yeah.

- Okay.

- Going to turn off the heat.

Now we're gonna add our reserved bourbon, orange juice, water mixture.

- Carefully.

- (laughs) Stand back.

It will sputter.

(mixture sizzling) Ooh...

Smells good.

Now, at this point, it's okay to go ahead and stir.

I'm gonna actually turn the heat back on... a little more gentle heat, a medium, and we do want to bring this back up to a simmer because we want that caramel to dissolve and you can see it's totally seized up.

And that's perfectly okay.

It will all come back together and form a syrup.

And this should take about a couple of minutes.

All right, now we have one more thing to add before we pour this over our chocolate.

We have two tablespoons of Angostura bitters.

- Hm.

- Which is kind of an unusual ingredient in a dessert.

But it adds so much, just like it would to a cocktail.

It intensifies all the flavors in the cake.

And it also brings out a lot of that orange.

- Do you like old fashioneds?

- (laughs) - Bitters, orange... - You know me so well.

- Bourbon... - I do wholeheartedly agree with what's in it.

And I'm going to carefully pour this over our chocolate and butter mixture.

Great.

And now I'm just gonna jostle this a little bit to make sure that all the chocolate is coated in the syrup.

And you do want to do this when the syrup is nice and hot.

We're just gonna set that aside.

Now, while this is still real warm I'm gonna carefully remove the orange strips and I'm going to place them here in this bowl.

I have a third of a cup of sugar.

And we're doing this because this is going to be the lovely garnish on our cake.

- Huh, double duty.

- It is.

You just want to pick off the peppercorns as best you can.

There we go; now I'm just gonna toss these into the sugar, just to coat.

All right, you set those aside, so you can see, our chocolate's been sitting here, and you can start stirring it.

And you'll notice that I'm not using a whisk.

The reason we're doing this is we do not want to incorporate air into this recipe, because we don't want to have any bubbles coming up and marring the surface of this cake.

- You want a perfectly smooth top... - You really do, it is... - Right.

It is a presentation kind of dessert.

So you want it to look, you know, like you tried a little.

- A little, yeah.

- (laughs) Okay, so this looks great.

The butter is completely melted, the chocolate is all melted, it's totally smooth.

And at this point, it should be just barely warm to the touch.

So here we have six large eggs that I have actually beaten ahead of time, and the reason I did that, again, was to give time for all the air bubbles to kind of come out of the mixture.

And you can see it looks much smoother than when, when you first beat a bowl of eggs.

So I'm gonna go ahead and stir these in.

Make sure I get all of them in there.

And again, here, we're stirring, you know, not whisking, so it might take a little bit longer, but it is worth it in the end.

And you can see the consistency really starts to change once you introduce the eggs.

Okay, so now you see the texture's changed again, and it's starting to smooth out.

- And it's very glossy.

- It is very glossy, very shiny, very chocolatey.

Here we have a nine-inch springform pan which I've buttered really well, lined with parchment, and then buttered the parchment again, because we really don't want it to stick to the cake.

And you'll also notice that it's set on a wire rack that's set into a baking pan, and the reason we do this is... to avoid having to bake it in a water bath, we bake it at a very low oven temperature, and having it up on this oven rack actually helps the air circulate around and it bakes more evenly.

- Hm, I spent years trying to solve the problem of springform pans in a water bath, right, with aluminum foil.

- Yes.

Yes.

- And they leak.

- Yeah, we don't want... no.

No leaks for us.

One last thing I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna tap around the sides.

(taps springform pan) and again what I'm trying to bring up and release any pesky air bubbles that might have still formed.

- I see one.

- Yeah, you see what's happening here?

And, again, I want to be sort of gentle because it is a springform pan.

And then I'm gonna go in and just sort of pop the bubbles that may have come up.

I think this looks gorgeous.

- It does look gorgeous.

- All right, so this is ready.

This is going to go into our 275 degree oven, and it's gonna bake until it's just jiggly in the center.

It's going to take about 45 minutes.

♪ ♪ Okay, Chris, I just took this out of the oven, You can see it's still jiggling in the center.

It looks beautiful.

And I think it has a beautiful, smooth surface, if I say so myself.

Now, we're gonna do one more thing.

I'm just gonna take a paring knife and very carefully run the tip of the knife around the edge here.

And we're just doing this in case any parts of the cake have stuck to the edge of the pan as it starts to cool.

We don't want any cracks to form.

And you don't have to go real deep.

I'm just going right around the edge here.

- So you do the same thing with a cheesecake, too.

- Exactly, yeah.

Any egg-based, you know, custard-style cake as it cools, you know, the proteins will shrink.

So this is a great insurance for preventing a crack in the cake.

We're going to let this cool to room temperature, and then I'm gonna go ahead and put it in the refrigerator, uncovered, for at least four hours.

And you don't want it covered because of condensation.

As the cake is cooling... the steam will drip back.

- Drip back.

- I know, and we don't want that to happen, right?

- And ruin the surface of the cake.

- No, no.

And so, yeah, once that's chilled for four hours, then we're gonna take it out again and bring it to room temperature, and then we're gonna eat it.

- You gonna call me?

- I'll call you.

- Oh good, thanks.

- (chuckles) ♪ ♪ - Okay Chris, so this has come to room temperature.

It's been sitting out for about two hours... - I just have to say, it does look amazing.

- Right, yeah, it's a showstopper.

It's beautiful, and we're gonna make it even more beautiful.

I'm gonna take those, remember these strips that we set aside.

- Mm-hmm.

- And I'm just gonna slice these on the bias a little bit into thin strips.

- So you did your own candied orange peel.

- Yeah.

- Sort of.

- And it's, you know, it's basically already done for us.

It's a great simple garnish for this cake.

You know, a lot of these cakes, too, will have, sort of what I think is like unnecessary coating of ganache.

You don't need it, it's, it's already so rich.

And then I'm just gonna sprinkle these right around the edge of the cake.

It's like a party on a cake right there.

It's like confetti.

- That is impressive.

- So here I have some nice warm water.

I'm gonna go ahead and heat up my knife.

This just makes it much easier to get smooth, clean cuts.

- Mm... - Is that a big enough piece for you?

- It is quite rich.

- You can always have seconds.

- As much as I want.

- That's true, as much as you want.

Ooh.... - Man, you are good.

- Here you go.

- Ooh.

Look at that.

- And here we have some plain Greek yogurt, which is a really nice accompaniment to this cake.

It's really nice and tangy, and it sort of offsets the richness of the chocolate.

- As if I would like to offset... - Thank you.

- ...the richness of the chocolate, I mean that's a... you made a big assumption there, right?

- Yeah, right.

You can see already just with your eyes how silky smooth and custard-y this cake is going to be.

- It's also, you know, not a hard cake to make.

- No, not at all, and very impressive.

- Oh... Wow.

- Whoa.

- Well, the texture is really silky.

It's nothing like a flourless chocolate cake... - No.

- Which is more fudgy.

And it has about four different flavors it has the peppercorns, it has the bourbon... - Right.

- And it has the orange.

- Yeah, it has all these things going on.

You sort of taste each one.

- Watch her face, if you want to know how good it is.

- (laughs) - You don't have a look at me...

So if you want to be like Erika and impress yourself and your guests at the same time, you can make bête noir, which is a flourless chocolate cake with a flavored sugar syrup, has an amazing silky texture and amazing flavor as well.

And just make sure you get the bubbles out before you put it in the oven.

- (chuckles) - Bête noir, our favorite new chocolate cake.

♪ ♪ - You know, one of the things I love about making French desserts at home is the French don't make desserts at home.

- (laughs) That's true.

- They go to the pâtisserie.

I mean every little town, you can go out and go buy a nice tart for dessert.

I mean mille-feuille, you know, a thousand layers puff pastry, all the tarts, the pâte sucrée, etcetera.

However, they do have some easier desserts like one layer cakes with a sugar syrup in them.

And they're relatively easy to make.

They're not too fancy, but they taste great.

So this is a gâteau nantais, which is a French almond rum cake, which I think is perfectly suited to Milk Street.

It's perfectly suited because I'm gonna make a bold statement here: this is the most tender cake you will ever eat, period.

- Wow.

- Well, it has almond flour in the cake, which has more fat in it than all-purpose or cake flour would, and then to take it a step further, you brush it with a rum simple syrup, so that soaks into the cake and adds even more moisture.

And that's where we're going to start here.

We're gonna make our simple syrup with rum to make it even better.

So I have three tablespoons of sugar in here.

To that I'm gonna add a third of a cup of water.

We're using dark rum here, which has a lot of spice to it.

So to kind of highlight that spice, we're going to add some spice into our simple syrup.

It's going to infuse into that syrup.

So I have a tablespoon of whole allspice and a teaspoon of black peppercorns.

(pilot clicks, flame ignites) And we're gonna bring this to a boil.

Let that sugar dissolve.

Okay, so now we're gonna add the rum.

So this is a half a cup of dark rum, but you want to do this off the heat, and that is so you don't set yourself on fire.

(laughs) It can flare up because of the alcohol that's in there.

- An excellent cooking tip, yes.

- Don't set yourself on fire.

So now we'll let that come to a simmer again and cook it for a couple of minutes.

You want to just kind of boil off that alcohol.

All right, this looks good, Chris.

Just going to strain it into this measuring cup, because we just want to strain out those spices.

- So how do you know when it's "done"?

- It's just going to get a little bit thicker.

We're really just trying to concentrate the syrup.

- Okay.

I'm gonna set this aside, we're gonna use this in a little while when our cake is finished.

Now we're gonna start with the batter.

So in the mixer I have 16 tablespoons of softened salted butter.

They actually use salted butter in this cake in France, we have a cup and a third of white sugar, and to this I'm gonna add a couple of tablespoons of lemon zest.

And I'm gonna zest right into the bowl because we want to make sure we're capturing all of the oil that's on the zest.

- Which would end up on the cutting board otherwise.

- Exactly.

- Right.

- While I do this, if you would like to help me out, we've got six eggs in that liquid measuring cup over there.

If you could beat those together for me.

- I'll just do this for a couple hours because it's the only time I get to do anything, - Nice work.

- I'm not stopping for anything.

- (laughs) - Okay, we're good.

- So we'll get this going.

We want to beat this for a couple of minutes, really until it's nice and light and creamy.

I'm gonna scrape this down, and then we're gonna add in the almond flour.

So it's two-and-a-half cups of almond flour.

And as I said, almond flour has a lot more fat than all-purpose flour or cake flour would.

So we're really adding a lot of tenderness here.

If you could just put that in.

There's a half a teaspoon of kosher salt.

Just mix this.

Okay, again just gonna scrape it down one more time before we add our eggs.

So we're gonna add the eggs, mix that until it's homogenous, then we're gonna turn it up to medium-high and let that mix for about three minutes.

And because we don't have any chemical leavener in here, there's no baking powder or baking soda, we're really using the eggs and the air that we're incorporating as we mix it as the leavener.

(mixer speed increases) ♪ ♪ All right, so it's really nice and light and fluffy.

- How is this, is it good?

- Mmm... - We haven't added any rum yet, so... - Boy, is that good.

- Yeah, it's so tender with the almond flour in there, it would just collapse if we baked it like this.

So we're gonna add some all-purpose flour.

This is half a cup plus two tablespoons of all-purpose flour.

And you don't want to mix it too much at this point or you'll develop too much gluten.

So I'm just gonna let it go on low.

- So the reason you could beat it for three minutes before was because it was just almond flour, which doesn't have any gluten.

- That's right.

And then finally, six tablespoons of rum.

Because... why not?

- I bet that bottle of rum's empty in the back, what do you think?

- (laughs) All right, I'm going to give it a final stir by hand just to make sure there aren't any pockets of flour or rum left in there.

We want to make sure it's all mixed together.

And this is a nine-inch cake pan that we buttered.

- Be sure to leave a little for me in the bowl.

- (chuckles) You're like my husband.

- If you love someone, you leave extra batter, right?

Even if you just like them.

- Mm, is that good.

Ooh, that's really good now it's got the rum in it.

- I know.

- Mm.

- So this will get filled up to about three-quarters of the way in this cake pan.

This is a nine-by-two-inch cake pan.

If you have a shallower one, I have an older one at home that's a little shorter.

- One-and-a-half, that's no good.

You just want to make sure you're filling it up three-quarters of the way.

You might have a little extra batter.

So I'm gonna put this in a 350 degree oven.

It's gonna go for about 50 minutes or so.

You want to poke it with your finger and have it spring back.

A toothpick here won't work because, as I said, it's the most tender cake you've ever eaten.

You'll get too many crumbs, you want to poke at it instead.

♪ ♪ So when the cake was ready, I took it out of the oven.

I let it cool for about five minutes, and then I flipped it out onto a wire rack.

Now I didn't re-invert it, because it's actually easier for us to brush this with the syrup and glaze it on the bottom side of the cake.

It's a little more even on that side, so it makes it a little easier to glaze - It is quite attractive.

- Thank you so much.

We're gonna brush it with that simple syrup we made.

And you want to do this while the cake is still warm because that will allow it to kind of soak into the cake.

Now, when I do this, I usually put a piece of parchment underneath to catch any drippings.

Some people use a sheet tray.

I am lazy.

(laughs) I don't want to do the dishes.

So if you use parchment paper, you just roll it up and throw it out.

- So you're a good baker and you're lazy and you like rum.

Those are the three things we know about you today.

- I like short cuts that save me time.

- Parchment paper in sheets, you know, is the best thing in the world.

- Best invention ever.

- I use them all the time, I use them on sheet trays as well, when you're cooking something so it doesn't actually stick to the tray.

- That's smart.

- Like roasting vegetables or something.

- So this simple syrup is gonna keep this cake really, really moist.

This is something that people who make cakes professionally, like a wedding cake maker, would do so that they can... - Really?

- ...make the cake really far ahead and then, you know... - I didn't know that.

do all the decorating and assembling.

They brush it with a simple syrup and that keeps it really moist.

So we're going to let this cool to room temperature, then I'll transfer it onto a platter.

♪ ♪ So now we're going to make a glaze.

This is typically a rum glaze.

We're going to make a lemon glaze instead.

We already have rum in the cake, we've got rum in the syrup.

I drank the rest of the rum.

(laughs) - Because we have no more rum and now... that's why we're not using it in the glaze.

- We really like this lemon with the balance of the cake.

It's really nice.

It kind of adds a little bit of brightness to it.

So I have a cup and a half of confectioner's sugar in here.

I'm going to add a half a teaspoon of kosher salt and then three tablespoons of lemon juice.

So we want this to be kind of thick.

You want to see it fall off the whisk.

But it should be almost like the texture of yogurt.

- But not superglue.

- (chuckles) Exactly.

Somewhere between yogurt and superglue.

- That's it.

- So you put it all in the middle and then kind of work it toward the edges.

The final part of this is we're going to sprinkle it with a little bit of sliced, toasted almonds.

Normally, I am not a fan of nuts in baked goods.

I really love it here.

It adds a different texture to the cake.

It adds a little bit of crunch, which is really, really nice here.

We're gonna let this set.

The glaze needs about an hour or so to set.

Once it's set, you can eat it.

I will say it's even better if you let it sit overnight.

Syrup really soaks into the cake.

- Fat chance.

- I know.

- That's not happening.

- I know.

But it's great because you can keep it for days and it's still delicious even a couple of days later.

- Okay.

♪ ♪ - So are you ready to try the most tender cake you've ever had?

- Are there multiple answers to that question?

- I think the only answer is... yes.

- Yes, okay.

This is also not a complicated French dessert.

- Absolutely not.

- Yeah.

- Mm.

- There you are.

- Ah, I think we just have to look at it for a little.

- It's good, right?

You can see how moist it is.

- Mm.

That is good.

Tender.

- I don't lie.

- Mm, it's not actually too sweet either.

I thought with a glaze on top it would... - No.

- The lemon in there really kind of balances that sweetness, so it's a little more tart than you would expect.

- In a lot of cases with sugar syrup, they get soggy and they almost get wet.

This is not that.

- No.

- No, it's, it's light, actually, it's very good.

- It is.

- This is one of those cakes where you just can keep eating it.

- Mm-hmm.

- There's no end point to it.

- I had it on my kitchen counter, and every day I'll be like, "I'm just going to try a little tiny piece," and before you know it, the whole thing is gone.

- Mm, this is good.

So French almond rum cake or gâteau nantais, which has a lot of almond flour in it, a little bit of all-purpose flour, that's one reason it's so tender.

It has a sugar syrup and a glaze on top, and it's not that hard to make.

I mean, you did a fabulous job, but it's not like doing mille-feuille.

So this recipe, French almond rum cake and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street are available at MilkStreetTV.com.

All episodes and recipes from this season of Milk Street Television are available for free at our website, MilkStreetTV.com.

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♪ ♪ - Ladies and gentlemen, we'd like to be the first to welcome you to Tel Aviv... - Welcome to Oaxaca's airport.

- Welcome to Beirut.

♪ ♪ (man speaking Hebrew) (speaking world language) - Bonjour, je m'appelle Chris.

- We call it supa kanja.

It's the word for gumbo.

♪ ♪ - Christopher, you have to make the authentic, original cotoletta alla Bolognese for me.

♪ ♪ - So this is the Eduardo García blender.

- This is the no electricity.

♪ ♪ - Next is dessert.

- That is really good.

♪ ♪ - I notice when you cook sometimes, you add a little bit of something and then you just put the whole bowl in.

- I like to be generous with my food.

Generosity is important in cooking.

- That's true.

♪ ♪ - Can start building bridges, and food is definitely a perfect common ground.

♪ ♪ - This is a generational thing.

It's, it's something that you inherit.

♪ ♪ - Yeah, that was great.

(woman speaking Mandarin) - What was this for?

What did she say?

- You get one more chance.

- Salute.

- How is it?

He's speechless.

- I'm speechless.

That's so good.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪