This month's challenge was one I hadn't heard of. (No surprise there. I think "cheesecake" is the only one with which I've actually had prior experience.) I did hear from a Hungarian friend that it's pronounced with an "sh" sound at the end, and that it's delicious. All I needed to hear!
So the Dobos Torta is a layered sponge cake, filled with a chocolate buttercream and topped with thin wedges of caramel. I decided from the get go to do a miniaturized version, as I knew this was destined for the office, and having everyone hack into a round layer cake just sounded like a bad idea.
I did not have the energy to play with the original recipe as handed down by the Daring Bakers hostesses myself, so I kindly borrowed Brynna Clark Grogan's, with minor changes:
Sponge Cake
- 2 1/2 Cups plus 2 T. pastry flour
- 1 1/2 Cups Granulated Sugar
- 2 tsp Baking Powder
- 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
- 3/4 tsp Salt
- 1/4 Cup plus 2 Tbs Earth Balance
- 2 Tbs Fresh Lemon Juice
- 1 Cup Water
- 3/4 Cup Soy Milk
- 1 1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
Preheat oven to 350º F. Brush a jellyroll with a light layer of oil. Use a sheet of parchment to cover the bottom. (The oil helps the parchment stick to the pan.)
Mix the dry ingredients together. Add Earth Balance, water, and lemon juice and beat well (with an electric mixer) for a minute or so. Add the remaining ingredients and beat again. Pour the batter into the jellyroll pan and bake for 25-30 minutes, until the edges are golden brown and the top is lightly browned, and the center springs back to your touch. Set aside to cool.
While the sponge layer is cooling, mix the chocolate buttercream. This version is courtesy of Daring Baker Mahima, and it was delicious:
- 1 cup Earth Balance
- 1 tbsp soymilk or little more, if needed
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup semisweet chocolate, melted and cooled)
- 1 and a half cup confectioner sugar
Next, release the cake from the pan. I then cut off the crusty edges (and ate them), and then cut the cake with a serrated knife into small squares, about 2 inches by two inches. I then sliced each of those squares into 2 layers. I stacked 4 layers of the small squares together, spreading chocolate buttercream in between. Then, ice the tortas. I realized early on I didn't have enough icing to ice the entire exterior of every mini-torta. So, half of them were fully iced, while half only had icing on the top and between the layers. I sprinkled toasted, chopped hazelnuts around the sides. Be sure to leave a few top-layer squares to use as caramel-covered wedges for garnishing the top.
Next, make the caramel topping. This portion of the recipe I took straight from the original, although I definitely made a couple missteps here. After previous kitchen disasters, I'm a little gun-shy about melting sugar on the stove. My fear of burning meant that I took the syrup off the stove too early, and never really reached the caramel color or texture. It tasted fine, but never achieved what the recipe calls for.
Caramel topping
- 1 cup (200g) caster (superfine or ultrafine white) sugar
- 12 tablespoons (180 ml) water
- 8 teaspoons (40 ml) lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon neutral oil
Directions for the caramel topping:
1.Cut the leftover squares into smaller-sized wedges.
2.Stir the sugar, water and lemon juice in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over a medium heat, stirring often to dissolve the sugar. Once dissolved into a smooth syrup, turn the heat up to high and boil without stirring, swirling the pan by the handle occasionally and washing down any sugar crystals on the sides of the pan with a wet brush until the syrup has turned into an amber-coloured caramel.
3.Pour the caramel over the wedges, let cool.
Finally, take each of the caramel-coated wedges, and prop them up against a toasted hazelnut atop each torta.
The tortas were definitely yummy, and I got compliments from my coworkers. The only bummer was that without the proper execution of the caramel-coated wedges, instead of tasting like an incredibly special, traditional Hungarian dessert handed down over generations (as if I know what that is supposed to taste like), they sort of tasted like birthday cake with extra-yummy icing. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.)
The Hostesses for this challenge have requested that we include the following message:
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.
