As a crowning finale to the year (and as a small thank-you for your loyalty), we'd like to share a recipe with you — one that will put the finishing touch on your wonderful festive menus. We created it years ago for the cookbook "Flambé at the Stove. Cooking with Liqueurs and Fruit Brandies" developed. This is how theDark chocolate cake with Hazelnut Spiritflag and Quince-Mostello-Sorbet.

The ingredients for the dark chocolate cake

120 ml hazelnut spirit

a little flour for greasing the moulds

170 g butter

150 g dark chocolate (70% cocoa content)

3 medium eggs

3 egg yolks

60 g caster sugar

30 g plain wheat flour

Hazelnut spirit to taste

The ingredients for the quince Mostello sorbet

4 quinces

500 ml water

2 tbsp caster sugar

Juice of one organic lemon to taste

150 ml Mostello

2 tbsp honey

Preparation time: 50 minutes

plus 12 hours for the quinces to rest

and 4 hours for freezing

The steps to the finished dish

Peel the quinces, remove the cores and cut into wedges. Then simmer until tender in lemon-sugar water and leave to cool in the liquid. Ideally, allow to rest for 12 hours. Then blend finely with Mostello, honey and a little of the cooking liquid, and churn the mixture in an ice cream machine. If you don't have an ice cream machine, simply transfer the mixture to the freezer. Stir briefly every 20–30 minutes for 2–3 hours. This achieves the same effect. Preheat the oven to 170 °C top and bottom heat, and fill a baking dish large enough to hold the cake moulds or cups with about 2 cm of water and warm it in the oven.

For the dark chocolate cakes, grease dariole moulds or cups with soft butter and dust with flour. First break the dark chocolate into pieces, then melt it slowly with the butter in a saucepan, stirring constantly. Beat the eggs and egg yolks with caster sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the flour and the slightly cooled chocolate-butter mixture. Fold everything together gently and pour into the moulds. Place in the oven and bake for approximately 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, pour hazelnut spirit into a spray bottle. Remove the dariole moulds from the oven, leave to cool briefly, then turn out. Immediately spray with hazelnut spirit to taste. Finally, serve with the quince sorbet.

And that's really all there is to it. We wish you every success. And since this is our last blog post before the holidays, we'd also like to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a few well-deserved days of rest.