You say Torte, I say Torta (A very Daring 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.”

Last week, I realized that I had not yet tackled the August challenge for the Daring Bakers, so I set aside a day to make the Dobos Torte.  If you think you might want to try this one, you can find the recipe on the Daring Kitchen website.

At first pass, the recipe looked complicated, but when I actually sat down and read thru the recipe, I realized that each component was fairly straightforward.  This was one that I had not tried before, so I decided to make the recipe as written — no substitutions.  One kind of cool factoid that came along with the recipe was that it was passed on thru the Budapest Confectioners’ and Gingerbread Makers’ Chamber of Industry.  Who knew there was a Chamber of Industry dedicated to confectionery and gingerbread making!!!

Because I had other things to do during the day, I ended up making this in stages, making the cake layers first, then making the the buttercream and icing the cake, and finally tackling the caramel layer.

The cake layers themselves start out much like a genoise, although the whites and yolks are separated.  Here’s an action shot of the yolks!

And the billowy peaks of the whites…

You spread out the cake batter really thin on sheets of parchment, so they only take about 5 minutes apiece to bake.  Even though you have lots of layers to bake, it goes pretty fast.  I like the neutral flavour of the layers, and I really like the versatility of baking the layers on a sheet pan — you can cut to pretty much any size/shape you want.  I see more of these in my future.

The buttercream was interesting to make, as it starts similar to a swiss buttercream, but uses whole eggs rather than egg whites.  I used Callebault chocolate in mine, and it could have used more chocolate in it.  As it was, it was tasty, but next time I will amp up the chocolate factor.  I think the layers would also be very nice with strawberry buttercream.  One thing about this approach to the buttercream, is that it results in a really silky smooth icing — perfect for frosting.  It’s also nice and light, so the individual layers don’t get weighed down with a heavy filling.

Finally, I made the caramel layer.  One cake layer was kept in reserve,  and the caramel drizzled over the top, to make each piece stiff enough to stand up on its own.   The caramel recipe here calls for lemon juice, and in retrospect, I prefer the straightforward taste of caramel.  I also had read of a number of other people who had problems with the caramel setting up too quickly.  I was working with a cake layer at room temperature, so didn’t have any problem, and could have actually let it cool a bit.

Here’s the final product, with a coating of toasted hazelnuts on the side.  Another change I think I would make next time is to marry more hazelnut flavour throughout, perhaps soaking each layer with a bit of Frangelico, so the exterior related a bit better to the overall flavour of the cake.

This cake keeps quite well, as promised, and is actually best served after a period of chilling, to ensure the buttercream is nice and firm.

All in all, I think that this is one to keep in the cake repertoire, as there are a lot of potential jumping off points.  The cake layers would be easy to change the flavour, and would go with a lot of different buttercream options.  I also like the caramel topping as a quick way to jazz up an otherwise plain cake, and the cake layers for this could easily be cut into different shapes.

Thanks to Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella for hosting this month’s challenge.  Stay tuned to see what daring surprise gets baked next month.