Daring Bakers: Dobos Torte

Recipe: Dobos Torte
Recipe origins: Rick Rodgers' Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.
Hostess: Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar
Co-hostess: Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella

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

First, a little bit of bloggy business: I'll be on holidays for a few days and will be in Ottawa this weekend with Jenny of All Thing Edible and Mary of Beans and Caviar. If you're around and want to meet up (we're thinking of dinner and a movie (Julie and Julia) for Saturday night), please email Jenny or me and we'll get you details. Needless to say, I'll do my best to autolaunch a post...but the key words are "do my best."

***

My regular readers know I've been stupidly busy this month. Workasaurus and Deadlineadactyle tagteamed me almost into submission. I beat them off, but it took time and energy. By the time I could draw breath it was...well...Monday. As in Monday 24 August.

I hadn't even really looked at the challenge before a couple of days ago. Sure, I saw a chocolate cake with wings in the challenge post: yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it--a layer cake of sorts, enrobed in chocolate with some sort of caramel thing on top. Nuts on the side. Easypeasylemonsqueezey.

After printing the instructions and reading them I realised it wasn't your regular cake. Parchment papers and drawn circles...springforms as templates and not baking vessels...six layers...toffee...chocolate butter cream.

Really, I didn't have time to think about what it was telling me to do. I just did. Even though I'm a huge proponent of analytical and critical thought, but sometimes thinking can really screw you up.

I knew for practical reasons a full cake would be out of the question. It's just me (well, not really: I decided to take it to a barbecue for two at Dear Friend's), so an eight- or nine-inch cake would be far too much. Add to that I'm going away for a couple of days and I'll have a stale cake sitting in my fridge awaiting it's binned fate when I return. I found the most adorable five-inch springforms a couple of months ago and I bought a set of six, thinking they'd be great for individual savoury pies, and thought "Well, if they're good enough for a savoury pie, they're good enough for a DB challenge." By eye I could see that I could easily halve the quantities for my teeny torte, my diminished Dobos.

The other changes may kick me out of the DBs for the month:


I just couldn't bring myself to ice the entire cake. All I could see was all that sugar: sugar in the cake, sugar in the icing and sugar in the toffee. I knew I'd either come away with a migraine or just be bouncing off the walls. And given it was a lakeside barbecue, I could easily see myself bouncing into the lake. Not good for a non-swimmer.

Then came the toffee layer. Sigh. Fatigue got the better of me. Although the toffee is really easy to make, I just didn't have the energy to do it....so I pulled my bottle of dulce de leche, melted it and used that instead.

I decided, instead of icing the full thing and turning the sixth layer into a pinwheel design, I'd turn it into a proper six layer cake, with layers of chocolate buttercream peeking from between the storeys of cake. the top layer would be drizzled with caramel. I think of it as a minimalistic version of the proper Dobos.

The result was a delicious...if not slidey cake. Quite honestly, I don't think icing the full cake would have stopped the Leaning Tower of Pisa appearance. The cake was tilty and cutting it didn't help as each serving became an Escher-like constuction of cake, chocolate and caramel...from certain angles, it was very difficult determining which end was on the bottom and which end was on top.

But does it really matter? No. The cake was lovley. The cakes were light and delicate. The buttercream (my first time making chocolate buttercream) was a heavenly moussey-marshmallowy spread. Sure, it would have been nice to have a properly done Dobos, but then again, it would have tasted just as good.




Click here for a list of participating Daring Bakers.


cheers!
jasmine

I'm a quill for hire!

My Cleo, my champion

As some of you who follow my Twitter feed know this week was a difficult one.

My dear Cleo, took a turn for the worse and a very difficult decision had to be made; this wasn't totally unexpected as he had quite a scare 2.5 years ago.

My ball of purry fluff who came in from the cold wouldn't recover from the particular combination of ailments as what would cure one would worsen another. It was for the best...he was in discomfort, but not in pain and it would have turned very quickly to pain.

We had our last cuddle yesterday, through which his legendary purr started out as a little putter and got stronger and stronger, happy paws and all. I couldn't be there for his final moments, but the exbf told me as soon as Cleo could no longer hear or see me, his purr died down to a bit of a splutter; he thought Cleo hung on for me, and he knew that was our last cuddle. He purred softly until the very end.

I'm teary, but I know this was the best decision for him.

Will be back...in a bit.


jasmine

Buckle, buckle, who's got the blueberry-peach buckle?

I do! I do!

Well, I did...all gone now.

My dessert preferences have definitely taken a turn towards rustic and hearty. Don't get me wrong. My heart still skips a beat when I see a fancy, schwoopy, piped, spun-sugared architectural marvel. But really, the older I get, the more like myself I become and apparently foof-less desserts are what I am.

Un-iced cakes and cupcakes, crisps and cobblers...serve me some of those and I'm as happy as the Cookie Monster in a Peek Freans factory (really...cookies aren't a sometimes food).

This year, my baked go-to dessert has been studies in baked, stewed and roasted fruits. I know I haven't posted much about this, and I'm not sure why. Maybe my thoughts are deluded in that they aren't fancy enough to blog about. Maybe they are so omnipresent in my kitchen that I just don't think of them as blog fodder. Really, everything that comes out of a functional kitchen (even one with Beelzebub) is food blog fodder.

Residents of my part of the world know this has been an odd summer with the coldest July on record for a good 15 -20 years. Normally, I'd have turned my scullery into an ice cream factory by now, but with such pleasant temperatures, I've kept with my baked fruit desserts. In cooler months, I'd usually be using wintered fruits--apples, pears or some canned or frozen fruit--so it was a bit of a treat for me to use in-season blueberries and peaches for this buckle.

Buckles--at least this one--combines the best of several dessert worlds. A stewed fruit base, a cakey top and then there a streuselly top. Add ice cream, custard, chantilly cream or just straight pouring cream and I think this may be pretty darned close to a perfect dessert...if I could figure out a way to incorporate cream cheese icing, then I would call it a perfect dessert.

While this isn't a true non-recipe recipe--the cake part is, as we know, chemistry and we know what happens when things go askew so it is necessary to measure things out--the fruit and topping are really done by feel and can easily be changed to match your mood, palate and pantry: change the fruits to what's available, just keep roughly the same weight and spice or sweeten it to your taste; if you want to add Scottish Oats or chopped nuts to the topping go ahead. It's all up to you.

Blueberry-Peach Buckle
Fruit layer
500g chopped peaches
250g blueberries
1 rounded Tbsp cornstarch
2-3 Tbsp brown sugar
pinch of salt
squeeze lemon juice

Cake layer
200g ap flour
1 dspn baking powder
salt
110g butter
100g sugar
two eggs
125ml milk
1/2 tsp vanilla

Topping:
50g sugar
50g ap flour
1/2tsp cinnamon
1/4tsp nutmeg
50g butter

Preheat oven to 350F/180C.

Tumble the fruit layer's ingredients into a 9" cake pan (or equivalent).

Sift together flour, baking powder and salt; set aside.

Cream together butter and sugar. Beat in eggs one at a time, then mix in milk and vanilla.

Stir in sifted flour mixture and pour over fruit.

Rub together topping ingredients, to a sandy texture. Sprinkle on top of the batter.

Bake for 45 minutes or until golden. and a skewer comes out cleanish.

Serve warm with ice cream, custard, chantilly cream or pouring cream, if desired.

cheers!
jasmine

What I'm reading: Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

I'm a quill for hire!