Yield: roughly 8-10 small servings. This makes 2 cups of batter that will fill 3 four ounce ramekins, but, you can also bake it in a larger vessel (my preferred method) like the white ceramic dish pictured. Baking in a wider dish allows you to cut nice long slivers, but takes longer to cook.
3ounceshigh quality dark chocolatewe use a 70% single source at the restaurant but a bar of nice, unsweetened chocolate will do just fine, just make sure it isn't milk chocolate since the recipe won't work with that
4tablespoonsunsalted butter
½cuppowdered sugar
3ouncesblack walnutstoasted and rubbed between two towels to remove the bitter skin
2large eggs
1tablespoonmild honey
pinchof salt
1teaspooncognac or brandy
For ServingOptional
Chokecherry vinegar saucereduce chokecherry vinegar with equal parts of sugar by volume for a light syrup
Candied black walnutssee my recipe here for those
White chocolate moussemade by melting white chocolate and cream together and then charging in an ISI can-you can substitute whipped cream
Instructions
Preheat an oven to 325. Spray the cooking vessel you'll be using with some pan spray or butter it lightly.
Grind the toasted black walnuts in a spice grinder until very fine.
Cook the butter on medium heat until it's browned and smells like toasted nuts, but be careful not to burn it. Puree the nuts with the browned butter in a high-speed blender until very smooth.
Melt the chocolate in a double boiler gently until just melted, then fold in the nut-butter puree, brandy or cognac, powdered sugar, honey, eggs and salt until well combined.
Transfer the chocolate to a cooking vessel, then cook in a water bath, uncovered for 30 minutes or until just set. The chocolate should not have risen too much. Remove the chocolate and allow to cool to room temp in the water bath, then remove, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate until needed.
To serve, slice the chocolate into 1 ounce slivers, allow it to come to room temperature before eating.
Notes
There's a lot of different ways to serve this. In the picture above there's candied black walnuts, white chocolate mousse, and chokecherry vinegar sauce.