I recently found out that Torta Caprese is a chocolate Italian cake, gluten-free, flour replaced by almonds. I tried it out when I saw that home cooking adventure posted a video showing how to make some kind of chocolate cake.
Here is my review on it
The making of it:
Making the cake was not hard, in fact, I would say it is an easy dessert to bake. Some things to take note on however is to definitely use a hand mixer or kitchen aid when whisking the egg yolks with sugar and salt unless you are very strong with mixing things by hand and do it already a lot. You should already know that you should do this if you pay attention to the video. When I made my cake I did not whisk the egg yolks for long enough and the mixture was not thick enough and did not have the right color, but my
cake still tasted delicious and I only noticed this mistake that I did when I was editing my video. Depending on which blender you have you might have to not blend all of the
almonds at once but do it twice using half of the almonds, I had to do this. Be very careful when taking the cake out of its pan and placing it on a nicer plate, if you watched my video you will know that my creation was almost completely destroyed because of this. I would not try to remove the parchment paper off and instead just have it with the cake and make sure it doesn't go onto peoples plates as they eat it. Now for the decoration part of it all, don't do what I tried to do but instead place whipping cream on top or do not use blueberries but more like a bigger berry like strawberry like how they did it in Home cooking adventure.
How it tastes like:
Absolutely delicious, very simple somehow but with a really nice taste. Chocolately enough but not to chocolate for those you don't like that kind of desserts. Definitely sweet enough but not too sweet, I notice how that is most people's criticism when they eat a dessert. The almonds were a very noticeable ingredient in the taste of the cake, but like how I wrote for my last review people who still do not like nuts ca still like this cake, my brother is a perfect example of this. He doesn't like nuts but he had 4 pieces of
the cake. At first, I was worried it was going to be too bland without frosting but I
noticed that it did not need frosting. It was incredibly moist, and not moist like it was almost undercooked but moister like the cake could not have been drier, somehow the use of the ingredients made it somehow like that. The touch of the powdered sugar or whipped cream and berries on top was not necessary but made it all even more perfect.
Here is the recipe:
Ingredients:
- (200g) peeled almonds7 oz (200g)
-semisweet chocolate
-2/3 cup (150g)
-butter3/4 cup (150g)
-sugar
-divided 4 eggs
-1/4 tsp (1g) salt
Grease and line with parchment paper a 8 or 9 inch (20-23 cm) springform pan (with a removable base). Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F).Place the peeled almonds into a food processor and process until finely ground but with still some remaining chunky pieces for a crunch texture.Melt chocolate and butter over a bain-marie until smooth. Let it cool slightly.Meanwhile separate egg whites from yolks.Mix yolks with ½ cup (100g) sugar and salt until thick and pale yellow colored .Mix in cooled chocolate and add ground almonds.Whip egg whites until foamy using a mixer. Gradually add ¼ cup (50g) sugar and whip until stiff peaks form. Gently fold the whipped whites into chocolate mixture.Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 30-40 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with few crumbs attached.Let it cool completely in the pan over a cooling rack.When cooled invert onto a serving platter and dust with powdered sugar.Serve if desired with whipped cream and fresh berries.