Chocolate Almond Torte

Today, a cake. Mandalas Torte, or in lay terms, Chocolate Almond Torte.

Why a cake? It’s Sunday. Why NOT a cake?

This cake is most definitely a HB family adaptation of a more traditional Hungarian torte. A torte, in case you’re not familiar, is a sponge-like cake.  There are so many varieties- hazelnut, walnut…some with chocolate, some with fruit, some with pastry cream.  Hungary is pretty famous for these types of cakes in general, and probably most famous for the seven-layer Dobos Torte, named after its creator Josef Dobos, which is seven layers of vanilla cake sandwiched with chocolate buttercream and topped with caramel. Sounds divine but…I’m not making that.

I’m making what is my family’s twist on the torte. It’s one of those recipes that evolved over time from my grandmother’s recipe that read something like “8 spoons of ground almonds, 8 spoons of sugar…” etc.

But…what is a “spoon”?  In this case, it was a large soup spoon that grandma had that she used to measure out this particular cake.  Um….even as a kid I needed something more exact than that, so probably about 18 years or so ago I measured out the conventional measure for that “spoon,” and that’s the recipe we have here today. Mama Buddha actually never did, but rather had her own “spoon” with which to measure. Turns out, as long as you use the same “spoon” to measure all the ingredients, the proportions will remain the same, and the cake will turn out just fine.  Mom modified the original recipe by adding chocolate and raspberry, and I’m changing it even more to make it gluten-free.  The result is a sort of chocolate chip whipped cream cake. YUM-O.

I will say that back when Mom first started making this cake, Brother and I had to grate chocolate bars by hand and Mom probably used the blender to process whole almonds. However, thanks to my food processor and Trader Joe’s for selling already-ground almond meal, this cake takes a lot less time to make today.

A few notes:  This is one of those separate-the-eggs-and-beat-the-whites sort of deal. If you’ve never made something like that before, make SURE that no yolks contaminate the whites. They will not whip up.

I made this three layers using an 8” round. Mom usually does two in a 9” round. To each his own, but both will work.

If you don’t care about the gluten-free thing, then just sub regular all-purpose flour for the tapioca flour below.

You can also omit the jam in between the layers and serve this with the jam as a drizzle on the side if you’re like Sally Albright and on the side is a very big thing for you.

NOTE: For those of you who know what I’m talking about, I’m switching this over to self-hosted this week. I barely know what that means. I’m scared about it, but as I’ve watched my capacity climb close to 100% the past few months, I realize that it’s time.  Bottom line is that the site may be down/wonky for…I honestly have no idea how much time. Bear with me, and we’ll be coming back full swing with birthday favorites week!