Wednesday was National Sachertorte Day in the United States, even though it's an Austrian recipe. The Sachertorte was first invented in Vienna in 1832, and is now famous throughout the world. To celebrate, I made my very own Sachertorte!
It all starts with a sponge cake. Six eggs are separated, and their yolks are beaten with butter and sugar; melted dark chocolate and a bit of vanilla is mixed in. In a separate bowl, the egg whites are beaten with sugar until they form soft peaks, then gently mixed into the chocolate mixture. Finally, flour is very gently folded in. The eggs are the only leavening agent in the cake, so you have to be careful not to beat the air out of them. Trust me, I've watched every episode of the Great British Bake Off. So I'm basically an expert.
Once the sponge cake cooks, it's then cooled and cut in half. My layers could have been a little more even; I ended up with a pretty thin bottom layer and a thicker top layer. Which didn't effect the structure or taste, but did make it look slightly less neat.
Between the layers of cake is an apricot glaze, which is made by boiling a jar of apricot preserves with a couple tablespoons of either rum or water. I chose rum because why not?
More of the glaze goes on the top and sides to soak into the cake as much as possible.
Then you make the chocolate glaze. Dark chocolate is melted in a double boiler with a small amount of butter and cream.
Once the apricot glaze is set, the warm chocolate glaze gets poured on top, then spread so that it covers all of the top and sides.
Once covered, the chocolate sets for a little while at room temperature, then goes into the fridge to set even more.
Whipped cream is traditionally eaten with every bit of this cake. I think it's mostly because the cake itself is dry and dense, so the glaze and the cream helps moisten it. The whipped cream is often just unsweetened cream, but I added some sugar to mine because I'm not a huge fan of cream that tastes like cream.
And because I needed a dish to serve for dinner, I decided to also make Spinatknodel, which are spinach dumplings.
Spinach is mixed with stale bread re-hydrated with milk, eggs, spices, and some flour.
The mix is formed into balls, then dropped into simmering water to cook until they pop up to the top.
Once fully cooked, they're served with a sprinkle of parmesan cheese on top. I served mine with some mustard, gherkins, and asparagus as well since I felt they wouldn't make a very hearty meal by themselves. They were actually surprisingly filling, and when the "dough" is made the night before they only took a few minutes to actually cook which is always nice when you spend about 4 hours making the cake for dessert! Totally worth it though.
Recipes Used: Spinatknodel // Sachertorte
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