I was going to be "hosting" my bookclub's 13th anniversary gathering (reviewing Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann--amazing book, by the way) and in honor of this momentous occasion, I offered to make a celebration cake. After making this offer, I spent the next three hours perusing Smitten Kitchen. If you haven't yet discovered this amazing food blog, I encourage you to check it out. I could spend hours (actually, I do) salivating over her hundreds of recipes and beautiful photos. While perusing the "cakes" section of her recipe guide, I stumbled upon this gem--the DOUBLE CHOCOLATE TORTE.
Now, readers be warned, I decided that I wanted to make this torte prior to fully reading the directions--it's a time consuming recipe, but man, is it amazing. AND unbelievably rich..throw your diet out the window kids. I balked at the 9 eggs, 3 sticks of butter, 2 cups of chocolate chips and a cup and a half of sugar in this one dessert, but with all those delish ingredients, I knew it would be amazing. And, I felt like the strawberries (that I subbed for raspberries because they were $4.99 a 1/2 pint!) would boost the nutritional value.
This cake is essentially a layer of flourless chocolate cake, followed by a layer of chocolate mousse, followed by whipped cream, topped with fruit of some kind. The recipe suggests putting a glaze of currant jam over the top of the fruit, but I omitted that step. From start to finish the cake took me probably 2.5 hours, but that was also because I whipped the egg whites and whipping cream by hand...I needed a little extra exercise that day and let me tell you my forearms look amazing. But I digress, I didn't take pictures during the baking process, but I will show you the finished product below...drum roll please...TADAAAAA:
This torte was AMAZING! So rich, but not too terribly sweet. Everyone in bookclub wanted the recipe. I would definitely make this again, but probably only for very special occasions.
Also, here's Maggie..eating dog food..isn't she cute ;-)
