Chocolate Meringue Cake

When I was little, my grandma always made meringue cookies for my birthday – and they were delicious. Meringue is quite difficult to prepare, especially without an electric mixer. I’ll bet your hand would hurt for days after preparing it. This Chocolate Meringue Cake is the perfect dessert – it’s made of an incredibly fudgy, decadent and fluffy chocolate cake that feels like butter and a chewy, crispy and marshmallowy meringue that has beautiful streaks of melted chocolate. The meringue and chocolate cake combo definitely feels luxurious, yet simple.

Ingredients used in this decadent Chocolate Meringue Cake

All the ingredients used are for sure already in your pantry or refrigerator. In this recipe I used a total of 8 eggs – quite a lot, but definitely worth it. I’ll divide the ingredient list into 2 separate ones: one for the chocolate cake and one for the meringue so it’ll be easier to follow.

Chocolate cake ingredients

• Flour: This provides the structure of the cake and it makes it really fluffy.
• Cocoa Powder: I used natural cocoa powder – it has a more concentrated chocolate flavour, plus it is acidic, which means it will react with the baking soda and will make your cake rise. The Dutch-processed one is neutralised, so it doesn’t react with the baking soda.
• Baking Soda and Baking Powder: To help the cake rise.
• Salt: To enhance the chocolate flavour.
• Granulated Sugar: To sweeten the chocolate meringue cake and to help it in terms of texture.
• Eggs: They help with the stability of the cake and add moisture.
• Milk: Adds moisture.
• Vegetable Oil: It makes the cake tender and super moist.
• Vanilla Extract: Adds flavour.
• Boiling Water: It helps bloom the cocoa powder, creating a deeper and richer chocolate flavour. Be careful when you pour it!

Meringue ingredients

You can also make half of this meringue recipe, but I think the chocolate cake and meringue layers are more balanced with the full amounts.

• Egg Whites: The main ingredient in the meringue.
• Granulated Sugar: You could also use superfine sugar.
• Salt: Adds flavour.
• Cream of Tartar or Lemon Juice: Helps to stabilise the meringue.
• Vanilla Extract: Flavour!
• Chocolate Chips: To make that big streaks of chocolate throughout the meringue.

How to prepare the best fudgy chocolate meringue cake

The cake batter comes together in 5 minutes or less, but the meringue needs a little bit more of your attention. It’s not hard to prepare, but you have to whip it until stiff peaks form. For clear understanding, I divided the instructions in 3 main steps:

1. Chocolate Cake
2. Chocolate Chip Meringue
3. Assembly and Baking

1. Chocolate Cake

This is the easiest step – the cake batter comes together in less than 5 minutes. Before prepping everything, preheat your oven and grease a springform pan with butter, then line with parchment paper and grease it again.

1. Mix the dry ingredients. In a large bowl sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add granulated sugar and whisk until combined. Set aside.
2. Mix the wet ingredients. In another large bowl whisk eggs, milk, vegetable oil and vanilla extract until combined.
3. Gradually add the wet ingredients to the dry ones and mix until smooth and no lumps left.
4. Carefully and gradually pour the boiling water and whisk until combined.
5. Pour the batter into the prepared springform pan.

2. Chocolate Chip Meringue

For this recipe I used the Swiss method of making meringue – it’s more stable, silkier and smoother. I used the French method when I made this Mixed Berry Pavlova, but right now I think that using that technique you can mess up that meringue much more easily. It happened so many times to over whip the meringue or to have sugar left undissolved in the meringue. The end result will have a marshmallow, fluffy center, a soft and chewy in-between part and a crunchy, crispy outside.

1. Melt the chocolate chips in a small microwave safe bowl. Heat it in 20 seconds increments, stirring after every increment until smooth and completely melted. Set aside.
2. Add egg whites, sugar, salt and cream of tartar or lemon juice in a large mixing bowl. Place over a saucepan filled with 1 inch of simmering water – the bowl shouldn’t touch the water.
3. Gently beat until slightly warm to the touch and all the sugar has dissolved.
4. Whisk with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until tripled in volume and glossy, stiff peaks form.
5. Mix in the vanilla extract.
6. Pour the melted chocolate chips into one side of the meringue. Using a spatula, make 3-4 big folds to leave streaks of chocolate in the meringue.

3. Assembly and Baking

• Dollop the chocolate meringue all over the cake batter and gently spread it. Then, make large swoops into the batter to bring out small amounts of the batter to the surface of the meringue. This way your meringue will have beautiful chocolate peaks and valleys.
• Bake in the preheated oven for 50 minutes or until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out mostly clean. Check your meringue quite often – you may need to loosely cover it with aluminum foil if it burns too quickly.
• The meringue will come out fluffy, but it will deflate a little bit as it cools.
• Let it rest on a cooling rack for 20 minutes. Gently loosen the cake with a knife and unmold.
• Cool completely before serving.

This chocolate meringue cake is best served at room temperature in the same day it was prepared. The next day, the meringue will start to absorb moisture and become soggy. I usually keep it in the refrigerator, but the meringue loses most of its crunchy outsides, but it’s still delicious!