Martha Stewart’s Heart-Shaped Flourless Cake Is the Valentine’s Day Dessert Worth Talking About

If there is one cake that screams romance, it’s the flourless chocolate cake — and Martha Stewart’s catering team has perfected it. In response to high customer demand, Martha’s in-house baker, Roberta Kins, landed on a technique so simple that she was once able to whip 38 of these cakes up in a single day.

I don’t know if simple is necessarily the word I’d use for this process (it requires a bit of multi-tasking), but Martha’s recipe, which she’s named the Roberta Heart, will only take you seven sometimes-concurrent steps to bake up a rich, moist, rum-tinged flourless cake.

Interested? Here’s how to do it: Dilute espresso powder in some hot water. Once well-blended, add the coffee mixture to semi-sweet chocolate — broken into large chunks to facilitate melting — and add some additional unsweetened chocolate to further enhance the flavor. 

Place your chocolate bowl over a pot of simmering water, then add in dark rum. As your chocolate melts, in a separate bowl whisk granulated sugar into your eggs until light and frothy. Place this mixing bowl of sugar and eggs over a second pot of simmering water, until your sugar is fully melted. 

While your two simmering pots melt your ingredients, prepare the third component of your flourless cake: whipped cream made with heavy cream, sugar, and vanilla. By the time you get your cream to the right stiffness, your eggs and sugar will be ready for the stand mixer. Beat the base of your batter for five minutes, at which point your chocolate should be ready to fold into the egg mixture.

One you add in the whipped cream, the consistency of your batter should be similar to traditional floured cake. To make this just right for Valentine’s Day, pour your batter into a 10×2-inch heart-shaped pan. The cake will bake using the bain marie method, and we suggest putting your roasting pan on the oven rack before placing the cake pan and adding about an inch of boiling water.

Allow to bake for an hour, then let your cake cool to room temperature while still immersed in the water. Refrigerate overnight before plating. Be sure to click here to check out Martha’s finishing suggestions.

Get Martha’s entire recipe for this heart-shaped flourless chocolate cake here and watch the video below.