dobos torte

The August 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

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This sounded fantastic- chocolate buttercream, thin layers of sponge cake, and hazelnuts. Though it turned out I didn't use that many hazelnuts (12, to be exact), since I didn't put any on the side of the cake.

I went for a square cake. It didn't turn out as prettily as I had envisioned- it never does. :P But it still tasted pretty good.

This was the first time I made a cake where you beat the egg whites and yolks separately, but it was a beautiful, light cake batter.

The cake was baked in layers- thin layers. I got a workout wrestling with the oven door, but I can get it to work with two heavy-duty oven mitts on and a bit of elbow grease.

Mmmm, chocolate buttercream.

The caramel topping was the hardest part, and I probably put way too much caramel on the cake (a cake layer, cut in pieces, with caramel poured over it.) I kept watching it boil, thinking "dontnucleatedontnucleatedontnucleate"- and it didn't. Perhaps the first time I've made a wet caramel where it didn't nucleate or burn. But this one had lemon juice in with the water and sugar, perhaps that helped? And I'm sure using superfine sugar helps too.

Anyway. I put it together, and added some raspberry jam, because who doesn't like chocolate and raspberries? cake-chocolate buttercream-jam-repeat.

I was not very happy with how the caramel pieces looked on top, I should have done triangles and put them around the edge of the cake but didn't think about it until too late. And the caramel was too thick on the cake, so it was difficult to eat. We have a stack of caramel pieces sitting in the fridge (the cake is gone).

I got 8 layers of cake out of the recipe, I think my layers were probably thinner than the recipe intended, but I think it worked pretty well. So my cake was 7 layers, plus the layer that was used for the topping.

On my baking wish-list is a piping bag with a set of pastry tips. I had a little buttercream left, where I could have done some pretty decorations but I don't have the tools. Also on that list is a stand mixer, but I think the piping bag + tips is considerably cheaper.

My torte did taste pretty good, but it wasn't stunning. Maybe the disappointing presentation detracted from the taste for me. Still, my dad liked it a lot (maybe he does have a sweet tooth after all).