Beggars’ Bars are Dorie’s twist to a French chocolate bonbon, the mendiant. The base is a very chocolatey cake which Dorie calls very soft, I would say almost gooey. The cake is made up of raisins, crystallized ginger, flour, cocoa powder, salt, I skipped the pepper, butter, oil, bittersweet chocolate, sugar, eggs and vanilla. The cake is baked at 325 degrees for 22 minutes. Dorie suggest to go by faith but my cake was still to gooey in the center and I cooked it for another 2 minutes which I am glad I did.

The one problem I encountered was with the chocolate chips. My husband had bought a bag of Nestle chocolate chips which I don’t usually use. Nestle uses so much emulsifiers that the chocolate chips don’t spread. I forgot this little issue and as I tried to spread the chips they just tore up my cake. So I remember a little trick one of my food scientist friends taught me, add oil to the chips before melting to make it spread, this trick fixed the problem. In my quest to use up ingredients I have on hand, I used dried apricots, crystallized ginger, raisins and pecans as my toppings. I ended up putting my cake in the refrigerator to get the chocolate to set.

This fancy dessert went to a dinner party we were invited to, it was a big hit. It is a rich dessert and small portions were appreciated. It is also a dessert for the chocolate lover. I thought the ginger was kind of muted since the dark chocolate was so overpowering but it may be just me, my husband said he could taste the ginger. The nuts were a welcome addition since the rest of the dessert is so soft.

To see what others thought head over to Tuesdays with Dorie.