Queen of Sheba Gateau

There is the very 1st recipe that I can remember doing when I was a Kid. On rainy days, I could not go play soccer or roam around the close country side with my friends I would take my mum’s cooking book and ask her to read me the recipe. I was barely able to decipher the words that made it yet. So, this very simple chocolate cake recipe became my childhood favourite and a treat for my birthday.

Recipe for Queen of Sheba

So this is how it goes for 4 individual Queen of Sheba gateaux:
Chocolate cake:
100g Ground almond
100g Caster sugar
100g of Dark 70% cocoa, bitter, cooking chocolate
100g Butter, softened
4 Eggs
50g Strong flour.

Chocolate Icing:
50g of Dark, 70% cocoa, bitter, cooking chocolate
200g of Icing sugar
2 table spoons water

Description:
Sift the flour into a bowl. Add in the ground almonds and the caster sugar and mix well.
Separate the egg yolks from the whites. Beat the egg whites into strong foam; add a drop or two of lemon juice at the end to make them hold firmer.

Place a bowl into a bain-marie and place the chocolate to melt, very slowly. When done, take the bowl of the heat and stir in the butter. Then stir in the egg yolks 1 by 1.
Stir in the flour/ almond mixture into the chocolate. When this is done, start folding in the egg whites foam as carefully as possible by cutting through the chocolate mixture and bringing it to the surface repeatedly.

Set the oven on 160 degrees Celsius/ 320F (gas mark 5).

• Fill 4 individual rings to 2/3 of their heights and bake them for 30 minutes.

When cooked let them cool on a pastry rack.

For the icing, put the chocolate to melt into a bain-marie. Mix well the icing sugar and water until it reaches a creamy consistency. Stir this sugar mixture into the chocolate and work vigorously for 10 minutes. Keep in a bain-marie until used.

The final stage of this recipe is the coating. Place your cakes on a pastry rack and neatly coat them with the chocolate icing.

Then garnish them as you wish. Here I made those for Easter so I used some chocolate rabbits and stuff.

“And king Solomon gave unto the queen of Sheba all her desire, whatsoever she asked, beside that which Solomon gave her of his royal bounty. So she turned and went to her own country, she and her servants.”

The Bible

Contains nuts and gluten. Suitable for pregnant women, vegetarian. Suitable for freezing.