"Dubai Chocolate" Cake Recipe

The popular "Dubai chocolate bar" is a milk chocolate treat featuring a creamy pistachio filling and crunchy kataifi (shredded phyllo dough), inspired by the Middle Eastern dessert knafeh. If you haven't had it before, I highly recommend giving it a try. This recipe that I'm sharing is a twist on the Dubai chocolate bar.

This is a breakdown of the layers we'll be putting together. I promise it's easier than it looks!

Part 1: The Chocolate Cake

For the chocolate cake, I took inspiration from the One Bowl Chocolate Cake Recipe and made some modifications.

We're aiming to make approximately an 8" x 8" x 3" cake. And you can place it in a tin similar to this one on Amazon.

Ingredients modifications:

Note: the recipe shared above would render two cakes. I swap out vegetable oil for olive oil and also reduce the amount of sugar quite a bit because the other layers are already quite sweet.

• 1/2 cup white sugar

• 1 cup all-purpose flour

• ¾ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

• 1 teaspoon baking powder

• 1 teaspoon baking soda

• 1/2 teaspoon salt (unsalted)

• 1 large egg

• 1/2 cup milk

• 1/4 cup olive oil

• 1 teaspoons vanilla extract

• 1/2 cup boiling water

Directions:

Step 1 - Gather all ingredients. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour one 9-inch round baking pans. (If you have a square 8" x 8" to match the container you'll put it in, even better)

Step 2 - Stir sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a large bowl.

Step 3 - Add egg, milk, oil and vanilla; mix for 2 minutes on medium speed with an electric mixer Step 4 - Stir in the boiling water. The batter will be thin. (Do not skip this step - this keeps the cake moist!)

Step 5 - Pour evenly into the prepared pans.

Step 6 - Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 30 to 35 minutes. Cool in the pans for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. (Note: this is really oven dependent. I like to put a timer for 25 minutes and then check to make sure it comes out clean)

Part 2: Chocolate Ganache

Going to be completely honest here, I mostly eye-balled it. But if you don't have a microwave or want to be more precise you can follow this recipe.

Ingredients:

113g of Good quality chocolate (preferably baking chocolate)

1/2 cup of heavy cream or heavy whipping cream

Directions:

Place chocolate and heavy cream in a microwave safe bowl and microwave in 30 second increments, stirring as you go along. If you're using a bar of chocolate, make sure you've chopped it up so that it melts evenly.

Part 3: Pistachio Kataifi Crunch

Okay, this is where you just gotta follow your gut that it's gonna turn out okay and you can play around with ratios to make it as thick or as thin of a layer.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup kataifi (I purchased this off Amazon, but you should be able to find it at your local middle eastern grocery store)

• 8 tbsp of un-salted butter

• 1/4 cup pistachios

• handful of white chocolate chips

• pistachio butter

• sprinkle of salt

Directions:

Step 1 - Find a pan that has high walls (could be the pan you cook pasta in). Melt enough butter that you can toast the kataifi thoroughly. The kataifi should be a golden brown colour once you've taken it off the heat and transferred it into a bowl.

Step 2 - Melt pistachio butter, white chocolate and 1/4 cup ground pistachios in the microwave and mix it together. I used my smoothie ninja blender to get the pistachios down to be more ground. Play around with the amount of white chocolate to get it to a chunky peanut butter-like consistency. Mix in a bit of salt to balance out the chocolate.

Step 3 - Gently fold in the kataifi into the pistachio/white-chocolate deliciousness.

Part 4: Chocolate Mousse

I followed this recipe with no modifications.

Part 5: Assemble

Make sure your cake has FULLY cooled before you try to assemble everything.

Step 1 - Place the chocolate cake at the bottom of the cake tin of your choice. If it doesn't fit, don't fret...you can treat it like tiramisu and cut pieces of the cake until it fits. No one will see the layers.

Step 2 - Next, put a healthy layer of chocolate ganache followed by the pistachio kataifi crunch, chocolate mousse and finally sprinkly some pistachios and cacao powder for a beautiful finish. I recommend placing it in the fridge for a few hours to get a nice dense cake.

If you decide to make the recipe, let me know how it goes!!

Enjoy!