Sacher Torte with Raspberry and White Chocolate Cream
The cake recipe is based on Tante Marie’s Sacher Torte recipe, which I then adapted from sheer necessity. The Beard’s parents have chickens. The chickens had sneakily laid their eggs in a new hiding place, which meant when they were discovered we knew some were fresher than others. I thought I had six eggs. Turned out four of them were fine and dandy, and two were mostly fine, but not fine enough for me to be happy to feed them to people. Maybe I was being paranoid, but that seems like the better course in such an instance.
The cream came out of a matter of necessity too. I had some double cream in the freezer, but it doesn’t always look quite as appetising when it comes out as it did when it went in. Turns out that stabilising it with a bit of white chocolate ganache works wonders though. The recipe was made up more or less on the spot but happens to work.
For dark chocolate ganache, the rule of thumb is equal weights of chocolate to cream. White chocolate wants two to three times more chocolate than cream to give the same consistency.
For the cake:
125g butter
125g sugar
125g dark chocolate
125g self raising flour (well, mostly self raising. My pots of plain and self raising flour got muddled on refilling too. Basically this cake turned out better than it had any right to)
4 eggs, separated
Preheat the oven to 180°c, or else leave the door of the top oven of the aga ajar while cooking and use the cold sheet. Line and grease a spring form cake tin. Leave the chocolate on the back of the aga to melt. For those of you operating without a capricious beast in your kitchen, either melt it in the microwave in 10-20 second bursts, stirring between each, or set over a pan of simmering water to melt. Set aside and allow to cool slightly.
Beat together the butter and 90g of the sugar until light and fluffy (mine never seems to get that fluffy, but maybe I’m just impatient). Beat in the egg yolks in, one by one. Add the melted chocolate, then the flour.
In a separate, very clean (grease is your enemy) bowl, whisk the egg whites to firm peaks (they should stand up perkily when you lift the whisk out, not flop gently over). Whisk in the remaining sugar until the mix is glossy and meringue-like.
Fold a decent dollop of your meringue mix into the chocolatey cake batter. This is to loosen the mix enough to let you fold the rest in. Fold the remainder in. If your cake mix looks a bit thick, as in sticks resolutely to the spoon, rather than drooping gently off it, then let it down to dropping consistency with a little milk.
Pop the mix into your cake tin and bake for roughly 30 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean and the cake springs back when gently pressed (I haven’t rediscovered my skewers since moving, but I find a piece of linguine is an excellent substitute).
Once cooked, allow to cool in the tin for at least ten minutes, before finishing cooling on a rack. Because of the meringue content, the cake will have a glossy top and will need a minute to stabilise as it cools. Once is has done so though, it is relatively indestructible. This is handy for the next phase: cutting it in half for filling. Make a diagonal cut on the side of your cake. This will help you line up the two halves when you reassemble it. Cut the cake in half horizontally. I find either a very sharp knife, run around like the hands of a clock, or a serrated knife, used the same way are the easiest tools.
For the cream:
100g white chocolate
50g double cream
The remainder of a 250 ml pot of double cream
150g raspberries – frozen and defrosted are fine but make sure to drain the juice off
Put the white chocolate and the 50g of cream to melt together, as before, either on top of boiling water, or in the microwave or on the back of the aga. White chocolate is a temperamental beast. In the not-so-very-unlikely event of it turning into a sad and greasy mess, a quick blast with a food drill/soup blender stick can magically transform it back into silky ganache.
Whisk the remaining cream to soft peaks. Don’t take it too far – it’ll get mixed more as you fold in the fruit and ganache and you can always keep whisking at that stage.
A couple of handy hints on whisking cream:
- If your cream is at room temperature it’ll whisk incredibly fast. This is not a good thing. It goes over in an instant and ends up somehow less light and airy. Always whisk your cream from
fridge cold - If you manage to over-whisk your cream, a little splash of unwhisked will rescue most messes
- Never use an electric whisk for cream. It is asking for trouble. Chances are you’ll end up with butter instead.
Here endeth the lesson.
Fold together the white chocolate ganache and the cream, then fold in the fruit. If you’re using frozen, chances are it’ll break up and spreak consistenly throughout, if fresh, it’ll have more of a marbled effect. Either works.
Fill your cake with the cream and reassemble, using your diagonal line to join everything back up neatly. Dust with icing sugar. Eat.
Delicious!
