Lightly toasted in a dry pan, then ground to a coarse meal in a food processor. Not too fine — some texture is part of the cake.
DESSERTS · CAMPANIA
Torta Caprese: the cake that has no flour and needs none.
Dark chocolate, almonds, eggs, butter, sugar. No flour — not as a dietary choice, but because this is how it has always been made on the island of Capri.
METHOD
7 steps, and one will define the dish.
Over a bain-marie or in short microwave bursts. Cool slightly.
Until pale and fluffy. Add the yolks one at a time.
Into the butter mixture. Combine gently.
To firm peaks. Fold into the batter in three additions.
In a buttered and lined 24cm tin. The centre should be just set.
At least 30 minutes at room temperature. Dust with icing sugar to serve.
WHY IT WORKS — THE SCIENCE
No flour is not a mistake. It is the recipe.
The Torta Caprese has no flour. This is not a modern invention, not a gluten-free adaptation, and not an accident. It is simply how the cake has always been made on the island of Capri — dense, fudgy, cracked across the top, dusted with icing sugar, and wrong in the best possible way.
The story most often told is that a Capri pastry chef forgot the flour in the 1920s while making a cake for some visiting American gangsters. The cake went to the table anyway. The gangsters liked it. The flour has been absent ever since. Whether this is true is unprovable. The cake is real.
The chocolate percentage matters
Use chocolate at 70% cocoa or above. Below that, the cake loses the bitter edge that keeps it from becoming a brownie — dense and sweet without structure. The bitterness of the chocolate, the fat of the almonds, and the lightness of the whipped egg whites are the three forces in balance. Reduce the bitterness and the balance collapses.
“The Caprese is not a flourless chocolate cake. It is a chocolate almond cake that happens to have no flour. The distinction matters because the almond is half the recipe.”— SALVATORE DE RISO, PASTICCERIA DE RISO, MINORI
Almonds: toasted, not raw
Toast the almonds lightly before grinding. Three to four minutes in a dry pan, moving constantly, until they smell nutty and the skins begin to colour. Raw almonds in this cake taste flat. Toasted almonds taste like the cake is supposed to taste. The difference is significant enough to be worth the extra step every time.
