Classic Home Desserts by Richard Sax and his fudgy chocolate layer cake Cookbooks, at their simplest, are collections of pages filled with ingredients and instructions. But if we return to them often enough, they transform from prescriptive steps and grocery lists into something special. Sure, it s easy to google a recipe and pick the one touting its quick, easy steps especially this year, when cooking can feel like drudgery. But there s something deeply grounding about cracking a cookbook s spine and working from print: deciphering a recipe without the chorus of online comments, or returning to a process that s tried and true.
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In preparation for the holidays, I ve been on a mission for the past several weeks to develop a dessert with the texture of cookbook author Richard Sax s famous chocolate cloud cake but the flavor of a good hunk of gingerbread.
Before his death in 1995, Sax was a prolific food writer who co-wrote a monthly column for Bon Appetit and also contributed regularly to Harper s Bazaar, Gourmet, Food & Wine and Eating Well. His cloud cake is a flourless masterpiece, made by whipping egg whites with sugar into a stiff meringue and folding in melted chocolate and cocoa powder.
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The cake emerges from the oven with a craggy crust and a fallen, basin-like center that gets filled with cool whipped cream. For me, it s a casual dinner party go-to, because it s simple, decadent, naturally gluten-free (and that pile of whipped cream can hide a multitude of sins).