Passport & Plate - Sexy chocolate cake a la "Torta in cielo"
Bulgaria | Sunday, March 2, 2014 | 6 photos
Ingredients
250 gr soft butter at room temperature
2 teacups of sugar
6 large eggs at room temperature
1 teacup of flour
1 teacup of extra quality cocoa powder
Some type of fruit preserve, preferably it should taste a little tart or sour for better contrast to the sweet chocolate. For this cake I used my favorite - dried apricots, soaked in brandy and blended.
Secret ingredients - whatever you fancy. I used chocolate shavings, almonds and walnuts, dried cherries, some brandy, coconut shavings... and some beautiful fresh strawberries to top it all off!
How to prepare this recipe
With passion and preferably when you are a little hungry, but not too impatient. As always – if you don’t put your heart into it, it won’t be worth it.
Mix half of the butter with one tea cup of sugar. Mix them together until the mixture turns almost white.
Add 3 large eggs to the mixture one by one.
Add the flour a little at a time.
Add half of the cocoa powder, about two spoonfuls.
Pour the mixture in a cake form, bake at 130-150 C, bottom heat only.
Once a toothpick comes out clean, about 45 minutes later, turn the heat off, leave in the oven for 10 more minutes.
Once completely cooled off, cut the base of the cake in two - try with a thread, it's easier then it looks.
Mix up the chocolate spread, using the very same ingredients as for the base, except this time you don't need
Play!
This is your time to be creative and have fun - layer it as you wish, use your own secret ingredients, spice it up, cream it down, shower it in brandy, dust it up in cardamom or chili powder ... surprise your taste buds. To tell you the truth, I haven't yet had a bad chocolate cake come out using this recipe. Enjoy!
The story behind this recipe
I have the recipe from my mom, who invented this sexy, simple chocolate cake. She loves to feed people. She especially enjoys cooking for hungry men – women's diets ruin the pleasure, she says.
When she was a student, during Communism times, her whole class was sent to harvest the fields for a month. Mandatory work, so that intellectuals don’t think too highly of themselves. She was picking tomatoes all day and reading a book to distract her from the misery and lack of edible food. The only book she had with her was "La torta in cielo” by Gianni Rodari.
So when she started making cakes, she stuck to her belief that the best cakes are a mouthful of surprises. A hill of sugared hazelnuts, a slope of ice-cream, a hidden lake of rum with islands of dried cranberries…She used to experiment a lot, but once she made this chocolate cake, no one would ever allow her any more improvisations– we loved it so much. Only recently she started making other cakes again – after she passed down the recipe to me and saw me make her famous chocolate cake for my husband.
You know how I got married? I met this guy in a bar – tall, handsome, a great dancer. We exchanged numbers, he didn’t call for a week… when he finally did call, he described in painful and meticulous detail how he found shark meat in the store (you may think this is easy, but not for an American, who had just arrived in Bulgaria, understands zero Bulgarian and does not read Cyrillic). So he cooked a spicy, hot and tempting shark soup. Very delicious it sounded indeed - I wish I had tried it, but did he invite me for dinner? No - too busy! Can you imagine that? Calling practically a complete stranger to describe your culinary feat...just for their information? I guess that did it for me - now I enjoy his culinary experiments daily and sometimes make him a cake.
I do wish you try this recipe at home. Oh, and please let your kids lick the bowl clean once you've mixed the chocolate cream – such is the family tradition!
