This cake is a prime example of Joe Pastry's Inverse Law of Kitchen Dynamics, which states that as the number of ingredients in a given recipe goes down, the importance of the quality of those ingredients and the techniques by which they are handled goes up. There's a great misconception out there that because a flourless cake isn't leavened, it's basically fool-proof. However as all of us who've eaten chalky homemade flourless cakes can attest, they can be, and usually are, messed up. Thus it's important to pay attention to the details.

So then, first thing is to get the oven on to 325. Set a large pot of water simmering for your water bath, and turn the heat on under your double boiler. Then, beginning with whatever blend of semi- and extra-bittersweet chocolates you wish, lay them down on your cutting board...

...and with the biggest, heaviest chef's knife you own, carefully chop it.

Next, get your cake pan ready for its nice warm bath. Prepare your 9" springform pan (instructions are over to the right). Lay it on a sheet of tin foil, gather the foil up around the sides, and press it to form. This is where the double-width foil of a professional kitchen comes in very handy, but I don't keep a two-ton roll like that hanging around (at least not anymore).

You want the foil to come at least half way up all sides of the pan like so:

What you're making is essentially a little boat. Now then, put your eggs in the bowl of a mixer fitted with a whip and turn the mixer on medium-high.

While the machine is running, put your butter and chocolate in the double boiler (yes that's expensive Euro-butter...remember what I said about ingredients?). Very gently melt them together. It should take about ten minutes.

...by which time your eggs should be very foamy and light, several times their original volume. About like so:

Now all you need to do is combine them, but gently since those bubbles are all the leavening this cake will have. Thus you'll want to fold them in (instructions for that are also over there on the right). Since the mixture needs to be lightened before real folding can happened, begin by adding a third of the egg foam...

...and simply stirring it in until it looks like so:

Streaks are OK. So then, add another third...

...and this time fold like you mean it. Until it looks like so:

Add the last of the egg...

...and keep folding diligently until just a few streaks remain.

Pour your batter into your prepared pan/boat...

...and insert it into your expensive Continental bain marie. Mine I have cleverly disguised as a cheap speckled tin roasting pan, so as not to make all of you feel inadequate.

Add your hot water, enough to come half way up the side of the cake pan.

Carefully insert the whole thing into your oven on the bottom rack (alternately, you can wait to fill the water bath until after it's in the oven). Bake at 325. I set my thermometer for fifteen minutes, then check the temperature every five or so minutes afterward to make sure I don't overshoot my target temperature of 140 degrees. A digital thermometer comes in very, very handy for this.

Ah yes, there we go, right about 140. You'll notice that the cake is still very pudding-like in the middle at this point. Never fear, it will firm. Remove it from the water bath and place it on a rack to cool. Once it's cooled down to room temperature, place it in the fridge to chill overnight.

This ultimate no-fail non-stick technique can be applied to any sort of pan or project — standard layer cakes, flourless cakes, fruitcakes, brownies, you name it. It's incredibly easy to do provided you have some parchment paper on hand. Flat sheets are the easiest to work with. I order pre-cut half-sheet pieces from King Arthur flour. They're expensive but worth it, at least to me. There's a short stack laying flat on top of my fridge at all times, ready for action.

So then, to begin you'll need a cake pan, a pencil, scissors, a can of non-stick cooking spray and a sheet of baking parchment.

Start by tracing your cake pan in pencil in the corner of the sheet (there are more elegant origami-like techniques for achieving this result, but I'm a big dumb guy and I like simplicity). Don't worry, graphite-phobes, the pencil lines won't touch the food.

Cut out your circle just inside the line.

Next cut a two-to-three-inch strip down the length of the sheet (this is for the side of the pan):

But since that won't be long enough to go all the way around the pan, do the same along what's left of the short end of the sheet:

Give the interior of the pan a good coating of non-stick spray.

Lay your bottom in...

The your sides/edges beginning with the long piece....

...and then the "patch", trimming it so there's no excess. You want it completely stuck to the pan walls (pretty nifty how the cooking spray does that, eh?).

Give the whole mess one more good coating of cooking spray...

...and voilà, she iz ready. Pretty, no? I'd like to see anything, anything stick to this. Get in the habit and you'll never spend $45 on a fancy non-stick springform pan again.

A flourless chocolate cake is a great time to let your inner chocolate snob shine through. Assuming you decide not to use any added sugar or flavorings, the only thing you'll really taste in this cake is chocolate, so it makes sense to get finicky. This is one of those times the home baker has a tremendous advantage over the professional pastry chef, since even Jacques Torres, Mr. Chocolate himself, couldn't afford to use the kind of top-quality chocolates you can. He'd never make a profit. So whip out your Garbo scarf and sunglasses and head out to the nearest gourmet shop.

The thing to remember when choosing chocolates for a flourless is that the more fat in the chocolate, the smoother and more pudding-like the cake. I therefore steer away from milk chocolates, since I like a nice firm stand-up slice on a plate. All bittersweet is the standard way to go, though I'll frequently put in a proportion of extra-bittersweet for kick (about a third). I'll even do all extra-bittersweet for a party of either serious chocoholics or Chinese immigrants (whom in my experience are not accustomed to sugary sweets and appreciate the harshness). Sweetness can be added after the fact by serving the cake in a puddle of some sort of sweet sauce...raspberry, crème anglaise, even chocolate. Of course the sugar can go right into your cake too if you wish, a quarter cup added to an all-bittersweet cake (with the 8 eggs) is a very satisfying middle ground.

But the what brand of chocolate is best? There I can't help you, since that's such a personal choice. Of the readily available high-end brands, Valrhona and Ghiradelli are excellent, as is Scharffen Berger if you dig their sort of rustic fruity-bitter aesthetic. Personally I like El Rey for flourless chocolate cakes. It's a Venezuelan brand whose makers somehow manage to work a little of that South American rain forest authenticity into their flavor profile. I don't know how they do it, but they do. Funny isn't it that a country run by a socialist dictator should produce a chocolate called "The King". My disdain for Hugo Chavez is almost enough to stop me from buying the stuff, though I'm fairly certain he doesn't make it himself.

No. Yes. It depends. On what? On how how much you beat your eggs. If you want a denser and ultra-smooth custard consistency, you'll scarcely want to beat them at all. However if you want a little more "cake-iness", which I do since it's called a "cake" after all, you'll want to beat them quite a lot. I whip mine into a tall and ultra-light foam, which give the cake itself extra volume (from a slight mechanical leavening "push"), plus a very slightly crumbly crumb.

It's a custard. A very dense custard to be sure, one that can seem almost brownie-like depending on its execution (and there are many, many different ways to make a flourless chocolate cake). But then it can't be a brownie because it contains no flour, in fact no dry ingredients of any kind. In that sense it's almost like a chocolate mousse, but of courses mousses (meece?) aren't baked or cooked. Nope, what you have on your hands whenever a wedge of that splendid, ultra-decadent faux-fudge lands at your table is custard.

Which means it must be treated with the utmost care in the mixing — and especially baking — phases of the process, for custards are delicate things, prone to curdling if they're heated too aggressively. Thus we'll need to make some important changes to the recipe below if we want a flawless end product. For one we'll need to lower the heat to 325 and bake it in a water bath (known amongst the Frogs as a bain marie), and for far less time than the recipe calls for...somewhere on the order of 20 minutes. But then the timing isn't really important where custards are concerned, it's temperature that'll determine perfect doneness. 140 degrees is the magic number, my brothers and sisters, and whether it takes us 55 minutes to get there or only 14 (as was the case with me on one notable occasion) matters not. Perfect temperature = perfect custard.

It's past Derby time here in Kentucky and we haven't had a late-spring freeze. Which means that unlike last year, when a deep, hard frost hit us just as all the trees were flowering, the outlook for fruit is excellent. Add to that all the rain we've had and it looks like it'll be a stellar jam season.

A positively devastating indictment of corn ethanol in today's Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/page/opinion.html). I'll get lots of grief for putting this up like I always do when I cross my friends here in the corn belt, but I simply can't help myself. Raw ingredient prices (especially flour, butter and milk) are simply too high. There are other factors playing into the global food crisis, obviously, including the recent Australian drought and increasing demand from consumers in places like China and India. However ethanol is a big part of the problem, and is set to become an even bigger one as federally-mandated ethanol purchases increase (as current law dictates) over the next 12 years. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I want farmers to make money, and indeed it seems to me that the demand for corn, even without ethanol, is pretty good. Can't we do without this artificial fuel bubble?

This week I have a yen for some serious chocolate. And what delivers a chocolate body blow better than a flourless chocolate cake? Spot a good recipe by its short list of ingredients: chocolate, eggs, butter. Nothing else is needed if the chocolate is truly spectacular — and why make a cake with anything less? Here's a recipe I like though I'm not a big fan of the extra sugar. Add an extra egg, nix the liqueur and vanilla, and let the true chocolate majesty shine through.

I've been getting a steady stream of inquires on the brick oven, like...when are you going to get off your butt and do more baking in that thing? The trouble is I have a fuel issue...i.e., I don't have enough. Being so focused on building the thing it didn't occur to me how much darn fuel an oven of this size would consume. A lot, and procuring the right fuel isn't as easy as it would seem. True it can be any sort of wood, hard or soft, but it has to be seasoned so it'll burn to begin with, then it has to be the right size. Two weeks ago I had a half cord delivered but it's a.) green and b.) made up of huge pieces. So now I'm looking at getting a log splitter. This is a side to the whole brick oven zeitgeist that I never considered until, whaddya know, I had a brick oven. Fuel management is as involved as the baking itself! At the moment I'm trying to figure out how to get still more wood, split it, find a place to put it, and age it — while not running out of the short supply I still have.

Oh poor, poor put-upon me.

File this under the "you know it's spring when..." category. This is a particularly perfect specimen, made by the immensely talented Grazina (a.k.a. "Gina") Biciunas-Santoski, owner of Healthy Food Lithuanian Restaurant on south Halsted street in Chicago. I just happened to be there for breakfast yesterday morning, wolfing down my usual order of kugelis (a sliced Lithuanian porridge of grated potatoes and bacon) and eggs, when Gina brought this beauty out...oh, if only you could smell a photograph (the fuzzy glowing halo you see is not a factor of my limited cell phone/camera lens, but the fact that this pie is actually holy). The crust was as close to perfection as a pie crust gets, probably made with a mixture of butter and lard since it was quite crispy, but without the tongue-coating greasiness that shortening imparts. That would be against Gina's ethos, actually. The rationale behind everything she makes is that it's all from scratch, no additives or preservatives (sounds familiar I know...but unlike all the johnny-come-lately's on the culinary scene, Gina's been making food this way for decades). That's what makes Healthy Food Lithuanian Restaurant healthy no matter how much bacon or pie you may put away while you're there. It's fresh and it's real, made with love and fierce Lithuanian pride. And that's as healthy as it gets in my book.

It's your lucky day. Today is Cinco de Mayo, the anniversary of the battle of Puebla in 1862, when Mexican forces defeated the occupying French under Napoleon III. So the legend goes, the bulk of the fighting was done by simple Mexican farmers armed with nothing more than rakes and shovels. History has since revealed that regular Mexican military units were present in abundance, a fact which by no means diminishes the significance of the victory...though the French, it should be pointed out, went on to take over the country anyway. The Battle of Puebla was a huge morale booster for Mexico, and has since become emblematic of Mexican independence and resistance to outside influences. Giant, eight-foot-long Mexican flags will be protruding from the passenger windows of every beat up old Honda civic in our old Chicago neighborhood today. Viva México, Viva Juárez!

By now everyone, regardless of whether they follow horse racing or not, knows what happened at the Derby on Saturday. A filly with more heart than leg strength ran herself out trying to beat Big Brown, and had to be put down just moments afterward. I can say it has cast a pall over Louisville, since Eight Bells had become something of a local hero in the week leading up to the race (how can you not love a spirited filly with the moxie to run with the boys?). There have only been a handful of those in the history of the Derby (38 in 134 years) and only three winners, the most recent being Winning Colors in 1988. Sadly and inexplicably (though I suppose it's not that inexplicable when you consider horses weigh 1,000 pounds and run on legs only as thick as a man's forearm) this one broke her two front ankles just after the race was over, making it impossible to get her upright and into a trailer. My condolences to all of Eight Belles' owners, her jockey Gabriel Saez and her trainer Larry Jones, who despite what the PR opportunists at PETA are saying, are all now in mourning.

On a somewhat lighter note, it seems my personal pick, Z Humor, was a bust. This comes as no surprise to all those who've followed my racing picks the last three years. Yet even I was horrified to discover that when the odds were recalculated Saturday morning, Z Humor had the longest in the field, set at a truly staggering 67-1. He shortly demonstrated why he inspires so little confidence among the book making cognoscenti when he stumbled out of the gate, losing what little hope he had of winning before the race even began. I'd like to point out, however, that while he did finish 14th out of 20, he beat several horses who were considered "insider favorites" among them Cool Coal Man, Gayego and Adriano. Cold comfort when you're out two bucks. This year demonstrates that favorites are favorites for a reason. Big Brown could have ice skated to wire. Hurmph.

The weathermen are saying there's a decent chance of rain tomorrow, which might change things for you last-minute wagerers out there. Sloppy tracks mean fortune favors the "mudders", i.e. horses that run well on wet ground. This year Visionaire is being touted as a mudder to contend with. Take it for what it's worth.

It's 70, the sun is out, the flowers are in bloom and the mint juleps are pouring. Oh, and the horses are running, that too. Today is Oaks day, that being the day of the all-fillies "Oaks" race over at Churchill Downs. Oaks day was once upon a time ladies' day at the track, however over the last thirty or so years it's evolved into locals' day. The Kentucky Derby has become such a mad house, all but the very cream of Louisville society (who can afford the top boxes and the limo's) leave it to the out-of-towners. The Oaks, however, is the race that Louisvillians can still call their own, so if you've ever in town and want to show you're in-the-know, ask whomever you're talking to if they went to the Oaks this year. You'll have instant street cred.

This morning was our annual crack-of-dawn family pilgrimage to Churchill Downs to inspect the entrants for this year's Kentucky Derby. Everyone who knows me knows what an astute judge of horse flesh I am, so I can only hope you waited to call your bookie in anticipation of this late breaking baker-on-the-scene report.

Actually I can't say I saw all the horses. The week before the Derby the good folks at Churchill Downs open the track at 6:00 A.M. to admit folks who'd like to watch the horses warm up. It's quite a thing standing trackside at dawn, watching the horses run. When the rising sun catches them from behind charging down the track, the sight almost stops your heart: a silhouette of pure horse energy set against backlit clouds of condensing exhalation. God love the great state of Kentucky.

If the horses aren't too wound up afterward, the jockeys will bring them back along the rail, where little girls in sundresses wait with peppermints in their outstretched hands. Talk about a local cultural happening, this is it.

So back to the horses. It's widely presumed that this year's race only has three horses in it: Big Brown, Pyro and Colonel John. I saw two of the three this morning and I have to say they were pretty impressive. By the time training really gets underway around 7:00 there are half a dozen or so horses on the track, not all of them Derby contenders since, well, this is the middle of the spring racing season. Thoroughbred colts and fillies run by at various speeds, but then suddenly out of nowhere there's a pyowwwwwwww-type sound like a bullet out of a gun, and you know somebody special just went by. That somebody this morning was Cool Coal Man who zipped past without seeming to touch the ground. Likewise Visionaire, another very impressive looking animal. The whole time Pyro stood back by the post, never running, just standing there as if memorizing the track. I didn't see him move, but I have to say he cast a daunting shadow.

Well before too long my own little fillies were getting restless so we had to move along. Of twenty Derby contenders I only saw four actually run, so I guess this year's insider is a little subjective. But then every tip sheet is subjective in horse racing. So many things can happen in the course of a mile and a quarter. A horse can stall in the gate, get bumped in the pack or boxed in by a conspiracy of competitors. All of which is to say the fastest and best horse frequently doesn't win (that's what made Seabiscuit's legendary duel with War Admiral such a true and honest test of raw horse power). That said, I'm going with Z Humor, a solid animal and proven winner that relishes long stretches like the Derby.

So there you have it, this year's Pastry pick. Come Monday I'll likely be $2 poorer. That's life at the track.

Longtime reader a frequent commenter Sally C. remarks:

I have to assume if one has a fruit tree in their yard that they know if they pick off the bloom to make an infusion, they will have no fruit there.

Excellent point.

You can make infusions. Which is to say you can extract the flavor and aroma of flowers using boiling water or steam. The result can be used as a component of a sorbet, a "fruit soup", juice, jelly or sauce. An infusion, if it's concentrated enough, can also be used in custard. The milder variety can be made by combing equal volumes of boiling water and edible flowers in a bowl and allowing the mixture to steep for several hours. The concentrated kind can be made by steaming edible flowers and/or petals in a double boiler over a small quantity of gently simmering water. The petals steam, droop, then ultimately drip their essential oils (infused in droplets of condensed steam) into the bottom of the double boiler. It takes at least half a dozen batches of flours to get a well-concentrated infusion, which I should stress should not be boiled or reduced terribly much. Ten or so minutes of steaming per batch (or until the flowers are completely wilted) is enough.

Once it's done you can add it to all sorts of things, crème brûlée for instance. Half a teaspoon or so of your flower infusion for each cup of cream in a given recipe should suffice (a quarter teaspoon assuming it's a commercially-made infusion like rose flower water). Just be sure to add it at the very end of the mixing process after the custard has been heated, you don't want to boil off those precious essential oils now do you?

Granted, it takes a lot of flowers to do something like that, but then there's nothing saying it has to be all roses or lilacs. It could just be a representative sampling of edible blooms from your back 40. Then again, if you're lucky enough to have an apple, lemon or orange tree in your yard, you're set. It's a lot of trouble, but can you imagine what the response would be from your dinner guests if you served them a flower-infused crème brûlée or ice cream garnished with candied flowers — all of the blossoms harvested from your own garden? They'd know they'd been danced with that night, ladies and germs, oh yes they would.

...was the sort of fellow who wore a jacket to dinner every night in his own house. Not always a tie, but when he didn't wear a tie his shirt was always buttoned right up to the top under a herringbone or houndstooth coat. He was a serious man, never lacking for a purpose, which is not to say he didn't have a sense of humor. In the summers when my twin sister and I were in grade school my mother would drive us out for weekly visits to my grandparents' house, which sat on several acres of wooded land in the far western suburbs of Chicago. We'd pass the mornings playing croquet on their expansive front lawn (here I should point out that this croquet wasn't the game most of us are used to, played with cheap mallets and hanger-wire wickets, but a proper gentleman's pass time played with imported wooden gear, a game he referred to as croakee...were he alive he'd want me to tell you that). Sometimes it was simply too hot to play outside, so my sister and I would busy ourselves with puzzles (the real wooden jigsaw type) or play with some of the Mexican jumping beans he always seemed to have around. Meals were served at precise intervals and perfectly prepared by my grandmother. We'd nibble at tiny toasted sandwiches in the dining room (served on china plates) and look out through picture windows into the woods. It was all very sophisticated, my grandfather would have had it no other way.

Which is what made it particularly surprising when, one day after lunch as my sister and I sat sipping ice water, he reached out to the center flower arrangement, plucked out a nasturtium stem, and without a word bit off the bloom. He glanced around, chewing, as we sat staring in shock, dumbfounded, as though chipmunks had just emerged from his ears. He swallowed, slapped his hands lightly on the tabletop, rose, and exited the room with a smirk. That, in a nutshell, was grandad's sense of humor.

Quite a few, but by no means all. Some are actually poisonous, so it's important to take care when selecting your blooms. Happily, quite a number of common varieties can be eaten, among them lilacs (one of my personal favorites), pansies, petunias, daisies (English), hollyhocks, nasturtiums, roses, tulips, honeysuckles, violets, hibiscus, orange and apple blossoms.

The smaller the flower the better they hold up, since a sugar-encrusted petal of, say, an apple blossom tends to want to break away from the axis due to its weight. But then there's nothing that says you can't garnish your desserts with candied flower petals now is there?

Of course it isn't necessary to add coloring to your sugar if you'd rather not. Simple white looks great on violets and roses. The only practical reason for adding color is if you intend on keeping them for a long time, since the original colors tend to fade.

It all boils down to water. Sugar is what's known as a hygroscopic substance, which means it draws water molecules from the surrounding environment by absorption. Microbes like bacteria and fungi need water to metabolize, grow and reproduce, and sugar denies them that. Thus, even though a few microbes might be present on a candied flower, they're essentially immobilized. The applications of sugar is a method of dealing with micro-bugs that's every bit as effective as applying salt, though not technically as lethal, since salt essentially implodes microbes, removing their water by osmotic pressure. Call it cruelty-free preservation, for those concerned with microbe rights.