Salted Butter Chocolate Cake

Salted Butter

As the daughter of a baker, something I cannot resist is the smell of freshly baked bread. And freshly baked bread slathered with good quality salted butter is, quite simply, a match made in heaven.

If I could have it my way, we would have only salted butter in our butter dish. But as we are careful about the salt content in our childrens’ diet, as well as our own nutrition, the only butter in our home is usually unsalted.

But once in a while, especially if we are having a plate of cured meats with a cheese platter and a good loaf of bread, we might indulge and buy a small packet of salted butter to go with. In Europe, the best quality salted butter generally comes from France, and my preference is for those with large sea salt crystals incorporated into the butter.

Salted Butter Chocolate Cake

Faced with some leftover salted butter which was nearing its use-by date, I was reminded of this Salted Butter Chocolate Cake from Mimi Thorisson’s latest cookbook, French Country Cooking. In fact, when I first bought the book, it was one of the first recipes which caught my eye. I love salted chocolate and salted caramel … so a salted chocolate cake sounded pretty intriguing to me.

Using Salted Butter in Baking

Generally speaking, unsalted butter is better for baking and cooking because it means that you can control the quantity of salt in your food. In particular, the amount of salt in salted butter varies from brand to brand, and this can quite often have an impact on the final taste of a recipe.

Unsalted butter is also, more often than not, better quality than salted butter; salt acts as a preservative which means that unsalted butter is generally fresher and has a shorter shelf-life. Although, as I mentioned above, my preference is for butter with sea salt crystals, and this type of butter often has a short shelf life like regular unsalted butter, which might indicate that it is a better quality salted butter.

But it is helpful to know that, as a general rule, if you use salted butter in baking or cooking, you should omit any salt specified in the recipe.

This particular recipe goes against this rule; not only does it call for salted butter, but it also includes the addition of fleur de sel.

Salted Butter Chocolate Cake Recipe

This Salted Butter Chocolate Cake is a rich and dense cake which lends itself well to dessert or pudding. Despite the use of salted butter as well as fleur de sel in the batter, it is not a particularly salty cake; most chocolate cake recipes tend to call for a pinch or two of salt to off-set the sweetness of the chocolate so it is not unusual for a cake recipe to include a bit of salt. There might be more salt in this cake than normal, but not so much that you notice it.

And in case you were wondering, fleur de sel is a type of sea salt which is commonly associated with the Brittany region of France. It is more refined than your usual sea salt and, due to its composition, it is more salty than other salts. For this reason, and also because of price, it is not generally used in place of regular table salt or sea salt for cooking; fleur de sel is more often used like a garnish, to sprinkle over food just before serving to enhance their flavour.

Chocolate Cake for Entertaining

What is lovely about this cake is that it forms a nice crust upon baking, and if you wish to undercook it slightly, the centre remains moist and gooey should you wish to serve it warm. If anything, the taste and texture of this cake reminds me a lot of a good brownie.

For something a bit different, I opted to bake the cake in one of my fancy cake tins – this is something I like to do for plain cakes, just to make them look a bit more special. So unfortunately, you can’t see here the lovely crust which formed on top of the cake, but it’s good to know that this recipe can be used in a Bundt tin or similar.

And like with any plain chocolate cake, I think it is best served with lashings of freshly whipped cream, and lots and lots of berries.

4.43 stars (7 reviews)

Salted Butter Chocolate Cake

Thanh | Eat, Little Bird

Prep20 minutes mins

Cook35 minutes mins

Total55 minutes mins

Serves: 6 to 8

A rich and decadent Salted Butter Chocolate Cake, baked in a bundt pan and served with raspberries. An elegant dessert for entertaining.

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Ingredients

• non-stick baking spray
• cocoa powder, for dusting
• 90 g (6 ½ tablespoons) salted butter, good quality
• 230 g (8 oz) dark chocolate, 70% cocoa
• ½ to 1 teaspoon fleur de sel, optional
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 6 eggs
• 300 g (1 ½ cups) caster sugar, (superfine sugar)
• 200 g (1 ⅔ cups) plain flour, (all-purpose flour)
• cocoa powder, for dusting, optional
• raspberries, to serve
• whipped cream, to serve

Instructions 

1. Preheat the oven to 160°C/325°F (without fan).
2. Generously grease a ring cake tin with a 1 litre (4 cup) capacity and dust with cocoa powder.
3. Place the butter and chocolate into a bain-marie over low heat, and stir until both have melted. Alternatively, place the butter and chocolate into a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water (but do not let the bowl touch the water), and melt the ingredients this way.
4. Stir through the fleur de sel (if using) and vanilla.
5. Set aside to cool for 5-10 minutes while you get on with the next step.
6. Place the eggs and sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer.
7. Whisk on high speed until the mixture is light and fluffy, and has doubled in volume.
8. Add the chocolate mixture and mix to combine.
9. Gently fold through the flour.
10. Pour the batter into the cake tin and bake for 30-35 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the thick part of the cake comes out mostly clean. It is a fairly moist cake, so the skewer will not come out totally clean. But if there is wet batter on the skewer, bake the cake for another 5 minutes or so.
11. Leave the cake in the cake tin for about 10 minutes before carefully unmoulding.
12. Serve warm or cool with raspberries and whipped cream.

Kitchen Notes

• WHICH CAKE PAN TO USE
  * The original recipe calls for a 9 inch springform cake tin which will show off the lovely crust on top of the cake. However, using such a cake tin is likely to produce a cake with a gooey centre because it is such a wet batter. Such a cake would require about 30 minutes baking time, or a bit longer if you don’t want it too wet in the centre. Keep in mind that, in France, cakes with a gooey centre (moelleux au chocolat) are quite popular.
  *If you don’t like cakes with gooey centres,  I would recommend making this cake in a bundt tin or similar ring tin to that pictured – the cake should still be moist, but you avoid the problem of having a wet centre.
  * Whatever size pan you use, make sure you only fill it to about 2 cm (1 inch) from the top so that there is room for the cake to rise.
• WHICH SALT TO USE
  * If you do not have fleur de sel, you can subsitute for the same quantity of Maldon sea salt.
  * For a less salty cake, you could omit the fleur de sel in this recipe, and just use the salted butter.
• OVEN TEMPERATURES
  All recipes on this website state temperatures for a regular oven (i.e. a conventional oven without fan). If you have a convection oven with a fan, please consult the manufacturer’s handbook on how to adjust the temperature and baking time accordingly.
• CONVERSIONS
  To convert from cups to grams, and vice-versa, please see this handy Conversion Chart for Basic Ingredients.

Nutrition Information Nutrition Information

Serving: 8g, Calories: 545kcal, Carbohydrates: 70.1g, Protein: 9.6g, Fat: 25.4g, Cholesterol: 165.2mg, Sodium: 279.4mg, Fiber: 3.8g, Sugar: 44.6g

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Update

This recipe was first published on 25 May 2017. It has been updated with new photos and more comprehensive recipe notes.

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