Mrs. Zeger's Chocolate Passover Cake

Oolala's Note:

From The New York Times and Craig Clairborne's cookbook. She is the mother of Eric Segal who is most famous for being the author of Love Story. The cookbook said "One of the most popular Passover menu articles to appear in the New York Times over the last couple of decades was this one. Mrs. Zeger's chocolate cake is indeed exceptional".

• Total Time: 1 hrs 20 mins
• Prep Time: 20 mins
• Cook Time: 1 hrs

Ingredients:

Serves: 8-12

Yield: 1.0 cake

• 10 eggs , separated, room temperature, can be slightly warmer
• 14 tablespoons sugar , about 1 cup
• 6 ounces bittersweet chocolate or 6 ounces semisweet chocolate , melted slowly over hot water and cooled
• 2 cups walnuts , finely chopped, not ground

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Beat the egg yolks and sugar until very thick and lemon colored.
3. Stir in the chocolate.
4. Fold in the nuts.
5. Beat the egg whites until stiff but not dry and fold into the chocolate-nut mixture.
6. Turn into a greased 10 inch spring form pan.
7. Bake 1 hour or until the center springs back when lightly touched with the finger tips.
8. Cool in the pan.

Reviews

[kerstin klein]

Every year we are invited at Passover to some friends and every year they as not eat any Matzoh meal, so this cake is specially good for them at Passover. I give the recipe 5 stars for a Passover recipe.

[Raquel L]

This recipe is excellent and definitely exceeded my expectations, especially as it doesn't use any butter like my other flourless cake recipes do. I recommend using the best quality chocolate you can get (even the Kosher for Passover bittersweet chocolate is probably better than semi-sweet chocolate chips) for a richer chocolate flavor. Somehow, my egg whites didn't get as stiff as they could have been and then I got lazy and folded them into the chocolate batter using the fold setting on my Sunbeam mixer rather than doing it carefully by hand and this recipe still came out great. This is a keeper!