Flourless Chocolate and Lime cake with salted chocolate and lime ganache

The special ingredient for this month's we should cocoa challenge is lime and immediately I thought of a lime and chocolate cake from Nigella that a colleague had baked previously which was absolutely delicious. My second thought was lime and chocolate cookies which I've never tried but thought would be interesting. 

The main inspiration for this month's theme is from one of my favourite chocolate shops in London - Montezuma.  They have a flavour called Sea Dog which is dark chocolate with lime and sea salt. By the way they have the best butterscotch chocolate ever, even better than Green & Black's which was previously my favourite. 

Anyway back to the cake. The night I made my cake was the day my colleague found out he's passed his MRCP exams.  It's a professional exam for doctors which is incredibly difficult and requires knowledge, skills, hard work and dedication.  Definitely worthy of a celebratory cake. 

I used Nigella's recipe for the lime and chocolate cake.  I then made a chocolate ganache with the Sea Dog chocolate as I needed something to cover up the holes in my cake and also to be able to write a message. 

The end result is a rich, soft cake with the tangy taste of lime.  The cake also smells amazing!  You can barely taste the salt but that could be because I didn't quite have 150g of the Sea Dog chocolate and had to use some plain chocolate as well. I might try adding 1/4 teaspoon sea salt next time. 

 Beat eggs and sugars 

 add cocoa powder &ground almond mixture

 adding lime zest and juice 

 the top cracked as I removed it from the oven 

 that's what ganache is for :) 

 My fav glitter icing 

CONGRATULATIONS DR MURRAY!! 

For the cake

150g dark chocolate, chopped

150g unsalted butter

6 eggs

250g caster sugar

100g ground almonds

4 teaspoon cocoa powder

zest and juice of 1 lime

• Preheat oven to 180C.
• Melt the chocolate and butter in a bowl over a pan of simmering water and set aside. 
• Beat the eggs and sugar using an electric mixer until about tripled in volume, pale and moussy. 
• Mix the ground almonds with the cocoa powder and fold gently into the egg and sugar mixture, followed by slightly cooled chocolate mixture. 
• Finally, fold in zest and juice of 1 lime.
• Pour mixture into prepared cake tin and bake in the preheated oven for about 40-45 minutes. 

Dark chocolate, lime and sea salt ganache

150g "Sea Dog" chocolate

140ml sour cream

60 icing sugar

zest of 1 lime

juice of 1/2 lime 

• Put all the ingredients into a bowl and melt over a pan of simmering water. 
• Allow to melt but don't let it get too hot.
• Remove from heat and stir vigorously until you have a smooth, glossy mixture.
• Spread over cake with a palette knife and decorate as desired.