About that Sacher torte - well, other than the fact that it is disregarding my carefully curated photo order.
About that Sacher torte - well, other than the fact that it is disregarding my carefully curated photo order.
Using hipster jam? Best thing ever. Go grow your own apricot trees, asap. As for the cake itself, it was an adventure. As many times, now, as I've made sponge (or whatever you are supposed to call them) style cakes, i.e., no chemical leavening, only abused egg whites, it is possible to conclusively say that they are fussy, sensitive little beings whose lofty promise frequently coalesces like a white dwarf upon cooling. Oddly, their textures are almost universally delicious, even so.
That said, all the recipes I found for this have it being a slightly drier (not dry) and lighter cake, although quite rich. Further, I wanted jam, so I went with the Official Version No. 2 (it could be No.1, it doesn't matter), wherein we split the cake and have an extra layer of jam between in addition to the outer coating. I did not boil and strain the jam because it's jam and I wanted jam. P.S. Excellent decision for both taste and texture reasons. If I was using commercial jam, if it was a very, very good jam, I would also eschew the boil and strain.
There is some confusion, but it seems the official versions are coated with a glaze, not a ganache. Ok, fine, I will attempt a glaze. Unwisely, I chose a "simplified" method. Don't do that. You are basically making fudge, but it has to be both cool and pourable. It is not possible to sufficiently cool this stuff and still have it be pourable as a one-step process [see photo that should have been number 2]. It was, however, literally shiny enough to see your face in. It was blurry, but it was clearly a face.
Ok, so that didn't work. Fine. I have coated cakes in ganache before, and consider ganache a pretty easy thing to make and I had plenty of Valrhona I brought back from California, so ganache it was. Plus, in addition to having been sealed by a coating of warm jam, the cake was now effectively crumb coated in glaze. What could go wrong?
Something I have never seen happen before. The ganache broke as it was hardening on the cake. I mean, not totally, it still coated it evenly and nicely. It just had this lovely fine crackle pattern to it. Nice. Where it dripped off onto the tray it solidified into separate cocoa butter and chocolate pools. So I now have my own personal chocolate cocoa butter for, uh, cosmetic purposes? I mean, we ate the chocolately, ganachey part, obviously.
No pic, but did serve in official manner with unsweetened whipped cream on the side. Even though it did not appear perfect, it tasted great, the textures were great. Basically, you couldn't sell it at Demel's or the Hotel Sacher, but you legally can't anyway, so I declare it a yum with minor fixes needed for any future such attempts.
NB: There are 2 legally approved Sacher Tortes. The official names are slightly different, one does, indeed, have that middle layer of jam and one does not, and one has the word Sacher written on top, while the other has a special little chocolate medallion on top. Little family argument, apparently, requiring the intervention of the courts.
https://goo.gl/photos/nUiRYbsCDobp16Jv7
https://goo.gl/photos/nUiRYbsCDobp16Jv7
Using hipster jam? Best thing ever. Go grow your own apricot trees, asap. As for the cake itself, it was an adventure. As many times, now, as I've made sponge (or whatever you are supposed to call them) style cakes, i.e., no chemical leavening, only abused egg whites, it is possible to conclusively say that they are fussy, sensitive little beings whose lofty promise frequently coalesces like a white dwarf upon cooling. Oddly, their textures are almost universally delicious, even so.
That said, all the recipes I found for this have it being a slightly drier (not dry) and lighter cake, although quite rich. Further, I wanted jam, so I went with the Official Version No. 2 (it could be No.1, it doesn't matter), wherein we split the cake and have an extra layer of jam between in addition to the outer coating. I did not boil and strain the jam because it's jam and I wanted jam. P.S. Excellent decision for both taste and texture reasons. If I was using commercial jam, if it was a very, very good jam, I would also eschew the boil and strain.
There is some confusion, but it seems the official versions are coated with a glaze, not a ganache. Ok, fine, I will attempt a glaze. Unwisely, I chose a "simplified" method. Don't do that. You are basically making fudge, but it has to be both cool and pourable. It is not possible to sufficiently cool this stuff and still have it be pourable as a one-step process [see photo that should have been number 2]. It was, however, literally shiny enough to see your face in. It was blurry, but it was clearly a face.
Ok, so that didn't work. Fine. I have coated cakes in ganache before, and consider ganache a pretty easy thing to make and I had plenty of Valrhona I brought back from California, so ganache it was. Plus, in addition to having been sealed by a coating of warm jam, the cake was now effectively crumb coated in glaze. What could go wrong?
Something I have never seen happen before. The ganache broke as it was hardening on the cake. I mean, not totally, it still coated it evenly and nicely. It just had this lovely fine crackle pattern to it. Nice. Where it dripped off onto the tray it solidified into separate cocoa butter and chocolate pools. So I now have my own personal chocolate cocoa butter for, uh, cosmetic purposes? I mean, we ate the chocolately, ganachey part, obviously.
No pic, but did serve in official manner with unsweetened whipped cream on the side. Even though it did not appear perfect, it tasted great, the textures were great. Basically, you couldn't sell it at Demel's or the Hotel Sacher, but you legally can't anyway, so I declare it a yum with minor fixes needed for any future such attempts.
NB: There are 2 legally approved Sacher Tortes. The official names are slightly different, one does, indeed, have that middle layer of jam and one does not, and one has the word Sacher written on top, while the other has a special little chocolate medallion on top. Little family argument, apparently, requiring the intervention of the courts.
https://goo.gl/photos/nUiRYbsCDobp16Jv7
https://goo.gl/photos/nUiRYbsCDobp16Jv7
There are three pics, something odd is happening with the share-y thing-y?
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