I feel very fortunate to have a job I truly love. Speaking as an attorney, my work is interesting and challenging, as well as personally fulfilling. Speaking as a baker, my colleagues are the most receptive and enthusiastic group of tasters I could hope for. To mark the tenth anniversary of joining my agency, I wanted to bake something extra special for my co-workers.
The traditional gifts for a tenth anniversary are tin or aluminum -- so I didn't get much inspiration there. But then I got the idea of making a ten-layer cake. I looked through my cookbooks and I came across a something that wasn't exactly ten layers, but close enough: Sherry Yard's Twelve-Layer Flourless Dobos Torte from Desserts by the Yard. It's a non-traditional Dobos torte recipe that Yard developed at Spago: twelve feather-light, ultra-thin layers of cake brushed with coffee syrup and filled with chocolate praline cream, topped off with pulverized brittle.
The cake requires only four ingredients: chocolate, sugar, cocoa, and eggs. You beat egg whites on low speed in a stand mixer for 12-15 minutes while slowly adding sugar. When the whites form medium-stiff peaks, you stream in egg yolks, followed by warm melted bittersweet chocolate and a mixture of cocoa and sugar. You divide the mixture between three parchment-lined half-sheet pans and bake.
The torte filling is a cross between a French buttercream and a mousse. It calls for praline paste and I made my own, using a recipe supplied in the cookbook; unlike the praline paste I've made before with a mix of almond and hazelnuts, Yard's recipe uses hazelnuts only. To make the filling, you beat eggs until they are light and fluffy, stream in hot sugar syrup, and keep beating until the eggs triple in volume. Then you fold in a warm mixture of praline paste and melted milk and bittersweet chocolates, followed by whipped heavy cream.
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To assemble the torte, you unmold one of the three sheet cakes onto a sheet of parchment paper. Then you brush on coffee syrup (simple syrup with brewed espresso added) and spread on a third of the chocolate praline filling. You stack the other two cake layers on top, brushing them with more coffee syrup and spreading on more filling. When you have your big stack of three cake layers with filling, you put the entire thing into the freezer for at least four hours.
After the filling has set, you cut the stack of cakes into four rectangles and stack them on top of each other to create twelve layers of cake separated by twelve layers of filling. I used a ruler to make sure that I divided the cake into four equal sections, but as you can see in the photo above, I didn't get it exactly right; you can tell that the torte was created by stacking three-layer units of cake.
The final component of the torte is a croquante garnish. While the cookbook provides an easy recipe -- the croquante is merely almond brittle -- I had some leftover hazelnut praline from making my own praline paste, and I used that instead. I crushed it in the food processor and sprinkled it on top of the torte.
I kept the assembled torte in the refrigerator overnight before taking it to work the next day. People oohed and ahhed at the sight of it, and I have to agree that it looked pretty darn impressive with the multitude of very thin layers. The torte was surprisingly easy to cut and serve; even very thin slices stayed intact. The torte tasted wonderful -- there was a lot of coffee syrup on the cake layers (the recipe instructs you to generously brush each layer with one-half cup of syrup, which is a huge amount, given how thin the cake layers are), and the coffee flavor was as prominent as the chocolate.
Because of the large amount of syrup soaked into the cake layers, the cake texture was very soft -- in fact, when I took a bite of torte that included many layers of both cake and filling, I could hardly even tell there was cake in there. The torte overall had a very light and airy texture; the praline garnish added the only texture contrast, and the bit of sweet crunch it provided was lovely.
While I really enjoyed the torte, I was a little disappointed that it was impossible to make out any distinction in flavor or texture between the layers. If you tasted it with your eyes closed, you might not realize that there were different layers at all. While it's not surprising that all of the layers seem to meld together given how thin they were, it also seems odd that you would spend so much time making and assembling so many layers of cake and filling when you can't taste the distinct components in the finished product.
But I'm not complaining. This cake was a beautiful, delicious, and memorable way to mark ten years on the job... and I'm looking forward to many more!
Recipe: "Twelve-Layer Flourless Dobos Torte" from Desserts by the Yard by Sherry Yard.
The traditional gifts for a tenth anniversary are tin or aluminum -- so I didn't get much inspiration there. But then I got the idea of making a ten-layer cake. I looked through my cookbooks and I came across a something that wasn't exactly ten layers, but close enough: Sherry Yard's Twelve-Layer Flourless Dobos Torte from Desserts by the Yard. It's a non-traditional Dobos torte recipe that Yard developed at Spago: twelve feather-light, ultra-thin layers of cake brushed with coffee syrup and filled with chocolate praline cream, topped off with pulverized brittle.
The cake requires only four ingredients: chocolate, sugar, cocoa, and eggs. You beat egg whites on low speed in a stand mixer for 12-15 minutes while slowly adding sugar. When the whites form medium-stiff peaks, you stream in egg yolks, followed by warm melted bittersweet chocolate and a mixture of cocoa and sugar. You divide the mixture between three parchment-lined half-sheet pans and bake.
The torte filling is a cross between a French buttercream and a mousse. It calls for praline paste and I made my own, using a recipe supplied in the cookbook; unlike the praline paste I've made before with a mix of almond and hazelnuts, Yard's recipe uses hazelnuts only. To make the filling, you beat eggs until they are light and fluffy, stream in hot sugar syrup, and keep beating until the eggs triple in volume. Then you fold in a warm mixture of praline paste and melted milk and bittersweet chocolates, followed by whipped heavy cream.
After the filling has set, you cut the stack of cakes into four rectangles and stack them on top of each other to create twelve layers of cake separated by twelve layers of filling. I used a ruler to make sure that I divided the cake into four equal sections, but as you can see in the photo above, I didn't get it exactly right; you can tell that the torte was created by stacking three-layer units of cake.
The final component of the torte is a croquante garnish. While the cookbook provides an easy recipe -- the croquante is merely almond brittle -- I had some leftover hazelnut praline from making my own praline paste, and I used that instead. I crushed it in the food processor and sprinkled it on top of the torte.
I kept the assembled torte in the refrigerator overnight before taking it to work the next day. People oohed and ahhed at the sight of it, and I have to agree that it looked pretty darn impressive with the multitude of very thin layers. The torte was surprisingly easy to cut and serve; even very thin slices stayed intact. The torte tasted wonderful -- there was a lot of coffee syrup on the cake layers (the recipe instructs you to generously brush each layer with one-half cup of syrup, which is a huge amount, given how thin the cake layers are), and the coffee flavor was as prominent as the chocolate.
Because of the large amount of syrup soaked into the cake layers, the cake texture was very soft -- in fact, when I took a bite of torte that included many layers of both cake and filling, I could hardly even tell there was cake in there. The torte overall had a very light and airy texture; the praline garnish added the only texture contrast, and the bit of sweet crunch it provided was lovely.
While I really enjoyed the torte, I was a little disappointed that it was impossible to make out any distinction in flavor or texture between the layers. If you tasted it with your eyes closed, you might not realize that there were different layers at all. While it's not surprising that all of the layers seem to meld together given how thin they were, it also seems odd that you would spend so much time making and assembling so many layers of cake and filling when you can't taste the distinct components in the finished product.
But I'm not complaining. This cake was a beautiful, delicious, and memorable way to mark ten years on the job... and I'm looking forward to many more!
Recipe: "Twelve-Layer Flourless Dobos Torte" from Desserts by the Yard by Sherry Yard.
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