Torta Caprese

On Wednesday, I am meeting my friends Mary and Sharon for lunch. We will be celebrating being vaccinated so that we can gather safely and we will be also celebrating Mary's birthday, which was on Sunday.

Mary was diagnosed with form of colitis a few years ago and as a result her diet is 100% gluten free. It isn't always easy for her to eat out and often she brings her own gluten-free bun in her purse so that she can have more access to menu items that might come on a bun.

In the past I've tried to find a gluten-free birthday cake for her with zero success. For a bakery to offer gluten-free products they have to have a completely separate workstream and in the case of small bakeries that just isn't possible, nor profitable.

The other day I was watching the program America's Home Test Kitchen on public TV and they were making Italian dishes. The dessert that they made was a flourless chocolate cake called a torta caprese. I watched the demonstrator make the tort and thought it looked pretty foolproof so I decided to make it for Mary's birthday lunch

I haven't baked anything for about five or six years probably, so this was strictly experimental. I found the almond flour at Aldi and that was the only unusual ingredient. The rest of the recipe called for eggs, chocolate, butter, vanilla, and a lot of eggbeater work.

The chocolate & butter melted together.

 

Can't  you almost smell the chocolate?

This is the first time that I have missed my countertop KitchenAid stand mixer since I gave it away about 4 years ago. But my handy dandy hand mixer was up to the task and did just fine.

These egg whites and sugar had to be beaten until they were very stiff and left very firm peaks. That's when a stand mixer is nice to have.

Then the egg yolks and sugar had to be beaten until they no longer look like egg yolks and sugar. Aerating is the key to this cake as there is no chemical leavening agent used.

The combining of the chocolate, the egg yolk mixture and folding in of the egg whites resulted in a quite firm batter that looked almost chunky as a result of the almond flour consistency.

I do not own a springform pan so just used a layer cake pan and then also made six cupcakes to see if this recipe would work in that format.

Everything was going along so swimmingly that I got feeling pretty confident and decided I could put a design on top of the finished cake using a piece of parchment paper and some confectioner's sugar to dust a design. And it worked great. Except when I pulled off the parchment paper I spilled the excess sugar onto the cake. Whoops. But I think she'll get the idea. And actually confectioner's sugar can sometimes have a bit of gluten so I didn't want to cover the entire cake with the design. And I did not intend for the snowstorm of look.

I tried one of the cupcakes and I think this is a very tasty dessert. Very chocolatey but quite light.

I think Mary will be very surprised if not shocked to see me bring a cake to our luncheon. Mary is such a good cook and baker. She has co-authored 2 cookbooks, won the Crisco award in high school, and studied home-economics.  She also knows that I never bake anything. I'm not a bad cook but I'm not a baker.  It will be fun to surprise her.

As a birthday gift, I'm taking her a bag of the Cowsmo potting soil from the dairy farm in Waumandee, WI.  I have a yard of fabric printed with dog bones that I will give her also. She'll come up with something to sew that into.