Tuesdays with Dorie—Chocolate Armagnac Cake

I love a recipe with a story, and this one starts with "You're fired." For creative insubordination. Dorie Greenspan was the apprentice pastry chef at one of the trendiest restaurants in New York City at the time: The Soho Charcuterie. She was bored making the same two desserts over and over every day so she tweaked this cake slightly and sent it out for service.

"I was fired .. for "creative insubordination" — how could I have known how angry everyone would be when, without mentioning it, I did away with the rum-soaked raisins in the chocolate cake and replaced them with Armagnac-soaked prunes!"
— Dorie Greenspan in an article for Les Dames Escoffier International

I can only imagine that the owners of Soho Charcuterie (who closed in 1985) now regret their lack of vision and trust in such a star of the food world that Dorie became after leaving their establishment.

The Cake
Dorie's Chocolate Armagnac Cake is a variation on a Chocolate Whiskey Cake known as Le Doris that was created by Simone "Simca" Beck (one of Julia Child's co-authors of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I: 40th Anniversary Edition). The Chocolate Whiskey Cake appeared in Simca's cookbook, Simca's Cuisine, and it was the one served at The Soho Charcuterie.

Prunes for Raisins, Armagnac for Whiskey, Pecans for Almonds
I was curious and decided to make the two versions of the cake to taste side-by-side. To see what the hubbub was about. To taste the cake worthy of firing someone for. So I found the original version of Simone Beck's recipe for Chocolate Whiskey Cake, compared it to Dorie's and basically substituted raisins for prunes and almonds for pecans. I wanted to buy Armagnac, but at $99 CAD for a bottle, I had to settle for cognac. I ended up using cognac in both versions so it's not a true taste test, but it was close enough.

Malcolm Jolley: Why did you get fired?
Dorie Greenspan: Prunes.
— From an interview between Malcolm Jolley and Dorie 

Another food writer, Florence Fabricante, award-winning author for The New York Times has her own version of this cake too. Her changes include increasing the quality and amount of chocolate, using brown sugar, currants instead of raisins, and sometimes almond flour instead of all-purpose flour. She also uses Irish whiskey.

Every baker is a recipe hacker. I, too, use what I have available, leave out what I don't like, adjust the technique, and find a unique way to present it. A recipe is a sweet muse.

Virtual Dorie
I saw Virtual JFK on the weekend, and it made me think about what-if scenarios. What if Dorie had used currants instead of prunes? Would she have been fired? Would she have settled into a career as a pastry chef? Would we have Baking: From My Home to Yours and bake each week through this wonderful cookbook? It's thanks to her tweaks and experimentation that we have so many beloved recipes. Cheers to her creative insubordination.

Recipe

Makes 8 servings (I halved each recipe)


In the photo:
water, cognac & prunes/water, cognac & raisins
pecans, flour & salt/almonds, flour & salt
eggs, water, butter, chocolate, sugar/Glaze ingredients

Dorie's Chocolate Armagnac Cake
For the Cake:
2/3 cup finely ground pecans (or walnuts)
¼ cup all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt
12 plump, moist prunes, pitted if necessary and cut into bits
¼ cup plus 3 tablespoons water
¼ cup Armagnac (or cognac, brandy or Scotch whiskey)
7 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cut into 4 pieces
3 large eggs, separated
1/3 cup sugar

For the Glaze:
3 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
3 tablespoons confectioners' sugar
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

Simone Beck's recipe for Chocolate Whiskey Cake
4 ounces (1 stick) unsalted butter, more for pan
1/3 cup dried currants
½ cup Irish whiskey
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, 70 percent cacao, in pieces
Salt
3 large eggs, separated
1 cup light brown sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour, sifted
Confectioners' sugar
1 cup heavy cream
You can find the recipe for Chocolate Armagnac Cake in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or here. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger! Thanks to LyB from of And then I do the dishes who chose the recipe for this week.

I didn't have two springform pans the same size so I used one springform and one small round pan. One cake was flatter than the other because of this.
Tasting Notes
This almost flourless cake is intense, fudgy, rich, velvety chocolate decadence with a slight kick from the cognac. The dense chocolate is taken to an al dente stage that melts immediately on your tongue. Though delicious on its own, a whiff of whipped cream or a swirl of vanilla ice cream and a strong espresso makes it perfection. To me, that is.

My daughter, on the other hand, asked after taking one bite and tasting a raisin: "What's in this?!" And then after finding out, she wondered: "Can you make it without raisins and prunes?" I'll try.

Update: Now that we've had a few days to savor these cakes, I have to say that we finished the prune version first. The prunes melted into the cake, making it moister. In the raisin cake, the raisins were not subtle. If you got a bit with a raisin, it tasted like raisin and chocolate. I think if I had soaked the raisins longer, this wouldn't have happened.

Recipe for Next Week (March 10)
Lemon Cup Custard on page 387 chosen by Bridget of The Way the Cookie Crumbles

My Bucket List

Visit the Armagnac region of France and sip some Armagnac.

Pruneaux à l'Armagnac
• Pruneaux au vin blanc (Prunes cooked in white wine)

Other Tipsy Cakes
• "For Dessert, a Cake That Asks for a Snifter of Irish", Chocolate Whiskey Cake by Florence Fabricante
• "When Temperance Isn't in the Cards", Whiskey-Soaked Dark Chocolate Bundt Cake by Melissa Clarke
• Michelle Johnston's The Devil for Breakfast

If you like this blog, you can subscribe and get updates automatically.

Click here to learn about subscribing.

Click here to subscribe.