Thursday, September 24, 2009

Sacher Torte - September challenge

September's been a really busy month - family birthdays, 10 days of puppy-sitting, two book groups, blah, blah. All of this to explain why I've just gotten around to making the sacher torte.
I found my recipe on Cooks.com and it was almost exactly like the one from Epicurious, except that my recipe used semi-sweet chocolate instead of bittersweet, and the syrup in mine contained 2 TBS. of dark rum. I had a lot of fun making it, but I did find it pretty labor intensive. And my kitchen was a disaster from all the bowls, pans and equipment I had to use. One bowl for melting chocolate in the microwave, 2 for the separated eggs, one for the creamed butter and sugar, and another to whip the egg whites. Yikes! Add to that my mixer and my blender for pureeing the apricot jam. I think you get the picture.
My most AHA moment came when I was incorporating the egg yolks into the melted chocolate. I don't remember ever doing this before, and it was amazing to see the chocolate get shinier and thicker with the addition of each yolk. My hardest times were incorporating the beaten egg whites into the chocolate mixture and again, adding the flour. My biggest problem was that I used a silicone spatula to do the folding of both meringue and flour; I would have been better off using a metal spoon, thereby not deflating the meringue. And adding the flour a little at a time would have made it much easier.
The finished torte was a little dry. I may have baked it a little too long, and I ended up not using all of the syrup, because I was afraid it would be soggy. I should have followed directions! Over all, the taste was good, but not great. I doubt I'd inflict it on company without some serious tweaking.

3 comments:

Tina said...

I'm about to do mine today - THANK YOU for the tip about slowly putting in the flour and using a metal spoon! Those are exactly the kinds of things I love to hear!

Katy ~ said...

Grins. Part of the fun of cooking is learning. Thank you so much for sharing your experience.

Joanne said...

I am always worried that my chocolate cakes will turn out dry. They seem to be pickier than vanilla cakes. Don't know why. Sounds like you did a great job though! It was definitely a fun recipe to learn on.