This is a recipe from my book Cupboard Love (Hodder, 2005). This is of course a cynical and blatant plug of my own work (bite me!) but it is also a really easy, and really nice cake.

Chocolate souffle cake.

This is really a baked chocolate mousse. What is wonderful about it is the total lack of flour, which gives it an intensely chocolate taste. It is very easy to put together and cooks quickly, which makes it a great last-minute choice for baking, especially as all the ingredients are loitering in my kitchen at any time.
This cake is spectacular when it is as dark and moody as it gets, so for the coffee I make a strong espresso. You can use instant coffee but make it stronger than usual.

For 8to10 people you need:
6 eggs, separated
125g icing sugar (set aside 1 heaped tablespoon)
200g bitter chocolate
125g unsalted butter
2 tablespoons strong black coffee

Grease a deep 20cm springform cake tin and line the base with baking parchment. Preheat the oven to 180∞C/Gas Mark 4.
Beat the egg yolks and icing sugar in a large bowl until pale and fluffy. Melt the chocolate and butter in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water or in a microwave, then stir in the coffee. Now, while the chocolate mix is still warm, beat it into the egg yolk mixture.
Whisk the egg whites with the reserved tablespoon of icing sugar until you have a meringue with very soft peaks. Fold this meringue into the chocolate and egg yolk mix as gently as you can, to keep it airy. The easiest way to do this is to take 1 or 2 heaped tablespoons of the meringue and whisk them in fairly briskly to loosen the chocolate mix, then after that go as gently as you can, using a spatula or a large metal spoon.
Transfer the mixture to the cake tin and bake for 30 minutes. No peeking, by the way, as this cake really needs constant heat. Even if it seems very wobbly after half an hour, take it out of the oven. Leave it to cool completely before removing it from the tin. As the cake cools, the centre collapses and becomes dense. Once cold, it is ready to eat but, if you leave it until the next day, the flavour becomes somehow more intense.