Photos: Passport & Plate - Coconut Curry Chocolate Torte

shaquayeats — Tue, 3 Mar 2015 02:10:00 GMT

Ingredients
Torte
Bittersweet Chocolate – 4 ounces
Coconut Oil – ½ cup
Sugar ¾ cup
Eggs – 3 separated
Cocoa Powder- ½ cup
Curry Powder – 1 Tablespoon
Salt – ¼ Teaspoon
Shredded Coconut (sweetened) – ½ cup

Ganache
Bittersweet Chocolate- 4 ½ ounces
Coconut Milk – ½ cup
Optional Garnish – ½ cup shredded coconut, curry powder

How to prepare this recipe
Torte
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Grease 8 inch cake pan (Vegetable spray or coconut oil spray works great).
Chop chocolate into small pieces and place into a bowl along with coconut oil.
Melt the chocolate and oil on a double boiler or in microwave at 15 second intervals, stirring in between.
To the melted mixture add- sugar, cocoa powder, curry powder, salt, coconut and lastly egg yolks.
In a separate bowl, whip egg whites until they form medium peaks.
Fold in egg whites to batter using a spatula. Be gentle so you don’t deflate the batter.
Once combined, pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 20 minutes.
Remove from oven and let cool to room temperature.

Ganache
Chop chocolate into small pieces and place in bowl.
Heat coconut milk to medium heat. Once boiling remove from heat.
Pour hot coconut milk onto chocolate and stir until all chocolate is melted and you are left with a smooth glaze.

Invert chocolate torte onto plate making the bottom now the top.
Pour warm ganache onto torte smoothing with a spoon or spatula to completely cover.
Garnish with shredded coconut and sprinkle with curry powder.
Place in refrigerator for 30 minutes to set.
Cut into 10 slices (or more) and serve

The story behind this recipe
To find inspiration for my recipe I searched through past assignments and recipes I’ve produced. I stumbled upon something I wrote for a food writing class last year. The assignment was to write a pitch to a food magazine with a topic you love and to include a couple of recipes along with it. I chose Cooking Light Magazine because they had a section called “Global Food”. My article “What is Curry” gave a brief summary of the history of curry and its uses in various cuisines. Curry was heavy on my brain at the time because I was fresh back from a trip to India where I celebrated the festival of Holi.
A recipe featured in that pitch was a Coconut Chocolate Torte, spiced with curry powder. The idea for this recipe came to me years before while in Chicago. A group of college friends and I went for The Taste of Chicago. While shopping one day, we entered a Vosges Haut Chocolat and tried some truffles. The Naga truffle combined chocolate, coconut and curry. All foods I really enjoy. So I thought how amazing it would be to have all of these ingredients together in torte/cake form.

Sweetly Spiced

Photos: Passport & Plate - Coconut Curry Chocolate Torte