Sachertorte - sort of...

We made a sort of Sachertorte with Springy today. It's a bit too bitter for her taste so next time I will use a lower percentage dark chocolate for the ganache. I reckon it would be nice to add grated orange rind and use marmalade instead of raspberry in it too (it would be lovely with Cointreau or such but I'd probably fall over after one slice then).

We spent the morning doing our lessons - Springy did some paper weaving because we've been discussing baskets and tried to do some form drawing type exercises with the up and down of that. We stuck it into her Main Lesson book.


We've had 2 walks with our dog today so far, cleaned out R, our guineapig and played a very intense game of Ludo this afternoon.

We also played a tune on the recorder together. The words involved weaving sweetly, weaving neatly, up and down, down and up...

Recipe needs modifying to larger quantities too (although it was probably enough to make 12 Sachertorte type fairy cakes) as it was a bit thin in the cake pan.  The current one is as follows:

4 oz caster sugar
4 oz butter
2 oz almond flour
4 eggs - separated
1 tsp vanilla essence
100g dark chocolate
+ chocolate ganache and raspberry jam

Prepare a round cake tin - brush with butter to prevent sticking
In a bowl:
Cream butter and sugar together with almond flour.
Add 4 egg yolks.  Gently fold in the dark chocolate (melted in a bain marie) and add vanilla essence.
Sieve Self Raising flour into mix and gently mix it in.
Beat the egg white until forming stiff peaks and fold it into the rest of the mixture.
Pour into cake tin and even out top with spatula.
Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes
Turn out onto cake rack and cool for 5 minutes.
Cut cake top off and spread a layer of raspberry jam in the middle.

To make ganache - 50g of dark chocolate, 20ml double cream and a dash of rum or brandy (if you wish)
Melt chocolate in bain marie, add double cream and mix in and then add dash of rum/brandy (you could subsitute with a dash of fruit juice)
Spread ganache over Sachertorte.
Serve your torte with a coffee or whatever drink you feel fits.