Claudia Roden’s chocolate cake By Susan Bell

Our all-time favorite family birthday cake is a Sephardi Jewish Passover cake. I got the recipe from my mother’s friend Lucie Ades, whose family came from France and was of Spanish ancestry.

I am guessing that they were from Bayonne in Southwest France, where Jews fleeing the Inquisition in the early sixteenth century settled and started the first chocolate manufacturing industry. It is there that chocolate cakes with almonds first appeared.

I have always made this with the Menier Chocolat Patissier that I find at my supermarket. Serve it with clotted cream or whipped cream. Serves 12

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

7 oz/200g best-quality dark chocolate(70%cacao),broken into pieces
6 eggs, separated
6 tbsp/75g granulated sugar
generous ¾ cup/100g almond meal
confectioners’ sugar for dusting(optional)

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Butter and flour a 9-inch round nonstick cake pan with a removable bottom.

Melt the chocolate in a heat-proof bowl placed over a pan of boiling water so that the bowl does not touch the water. Using an electric hand mixer, beat the egg whites until stiff.In another bowl, using the same mixer, beat the egg yolks with the granulated sugar until pale.

Mix in the almond meal and then the melted chocolate. Add 1 to 2 tbsp of the beaten whites and mix them in to loosen the very dense almond-chocolate mixture, then fold in the remaining whites. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and bake for 30 minutes, until firm to the touch. Let cool before removing from the pan. When ready to serve, dust the cake with confectioners’ sugar, if you like.

Reprinted with permission from Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean: Treasured Recipes from a Lifetime of Travelby Claudia Roden, copyright©2021. Published by Ten Speed Press, animprint of Penguin Random House.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$90 $180

$360

Other amount