by Beverly Adam author of: Two Lovers, the true love story of Carole Lombard and Russ Columbo, and the kindle vella, Maria de Padilla, The Secret Queen of Castile.

Like everyone else, I love Julia Child, and have watched the movie Julia & Julia on Netflixhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozRK7VXQl-k, and the mini-series, Julia, on HBO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZBacZqwbCA, as well as read and shared her biography My Life in France by Alex Prud’homme, which details her life both as a cook and her earlier career in the foreign service with her husband Paul. ISBN 1400043468 and I look forward to reading Warming Up Julia by Helen Horowitz, which I suspect a lot of the HBO series is based upon, as it discusses the team behind her cooking show. I gifted my copy of her biography to an elderly ninety-two-years old friend who had served during World War II in the Air Force and had lived abroad.

During the mini-series Julia Childs cooks her favorite chocolate cake, the Queen of Saba (Reine de Saba) in order to influence people in favor of her show. It looks onscreen decadently rich with lots of chocolate and almonds, and it is. When I asked my son what his impression of the cake was when we made it, he said, “Lots of butter required.”

We used a family heirloom, Julia Child’s Mastering The Art of French Cooking, which my grandmother gifted me upon marrying a Frenchman. The cookbook during my marriage turned out to be a lifesaver, as I knew next to nothing about cooking. It was expected, when I lived in Grenoble, France, that I would cook their cuisine. I often used the cookbook, cooking with a pressure cooker and two electric stove burners. There was no oven. I bought a confectioner’s oven, but the altitude in the alps always caused my chocolate cakes to turn out flat (much to the delight of our English roommate who once ate an entire deflated cake by himself). The making of this Reine de Saba almond cake was a first-time challenge for both my son and I. We made it in my tiny studio apartment in the city Julia had once called home, Pasadena.

We tried following along using Julia Child’s First Courses and Desserts on Youtube. The cake is discoverable at 48:56, but in this version, Julia was using her “new and improved” recipe that called for five eggs, instead of three, lots more salt, and a twice the amount of chocolate. We decided to stick to the original recipe found in the cookbook and watched the show to see how to fold the egg whites in and to make certain that I was correct about cutting the butter at room temperature and blending in the sugar. I was.

The Julia Child’s Queen of Saba chocolate almond cake recipe can be found in The Gloucester Daily Times link. It makes more than six slices of cake. This is the original recipe from the cookbook and has far less ingredient requirements than the one used on youtube. The Gloucester Daily Times link: https://www.gloucestertimes.com/news/lifestyles/a-favorite-cake-from-julia-childs-recipe-files/article_b8f258af-ba70-5754-9754-05fe709a5092.html?msclkid=eba6acddb9c911eca4bd682946c6bcd7

Preheat your oven to 350 ahead of time.

Flouring and Buttering Cake Pan: We used an 8 inch cake pan tin. The cake is one layer, not two. We used Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate. I bought 2 bars (8 ounces) found in the baking section at Target.

We did not line our tin with paper, but simply took a paper towel and wiped butter all over the tin and then covered it lightly in flour (see below). (Shake excess off into trash).

Boiling Chocolate: Julia made a double boiler on the show using a large pot filled with boiled water and a smaller cooking pan (see youtube). We did the same. We cut up our 4 squares of chocolate and used rum instead of coffee. You want it the water hot, but not bubbling. We did not make the chocolate smooth until after we added the egg whites into the batter. We set stove on warm while we blended the other ingredients.

Cut the butter at room temperature (1) and then blend in sugar (2) and egg yolks.

#1)

#2 Blend in sugar and yolks

How to separate eggs yolks and whites. You have two bowls. One for the yolks and one for the whites. You crack the egg and you let drip out the white (the clear liquid) into one bowl while the yolk lies in the shell. Then you placed the yolk (yellow part) in the other.

My grandmother’s well-loved copy, gifted to me.

We had some difficulty getting our egg whites to be fluffy and stiff. After several tries, we decided churned egg whites were going to have to do. We folded them into the flour and pulverized almonds (you can use a food processor to pulverize) with the almond extract and rum. We used almond flour bought at Target.

How to fold in egg whites. You take your spatula and lift a portion of your mixture over the egg whites that you added to bowl. You do this several times until all of it is blended in. You can see Julia do it on youtube at 52:50.

How to tell if cake is ready to take out of oven: You can insert a thin toothpick or fork. It should not look wet and gooey. If a few crumbs show, you are good to go. The top should have the hardness of the top of a baked brownie. Take the pan and put in fridge for quick cooling.

Icing the cake: To prepare to ice the cake. I would run a knife along the edge of cake in pan. Then lift out with help of a spatula. You put the cake on one plate bottom up and then flip it onto the other to have the hard top upon which to ice your cake. If chocolate frosting is gooey, continue to decorate with the almonds, but put back in fridge, which is what we ended up doing as both the cake and the icing was warm.

Icing: we used the Glacage au chocolat recipe found at the very end of the cookbook and you can read The Times recopied version. We decorated with slices of almonds. First bite: Yum! The taste of almond with chocolate was a delight for the tastebuds. The cake was light, despite all the butter used, and we both declared it to be a success. Have fun baking. Bon appetite!