Daring Bakers: Dobos Torte

The August 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.



It's hard to believe, but this is my twelfth challenge as a Daring Baker. It was just a year ago that I was rolling up my sleeves and rolling out lavash crackers accompanied with vegan dips. Who can forget the tossing of pizza? The most memorable, has to be the one that took the longest (3 days!!). Not all challenges have been successful. Overwhipping egg whites leads to an incredibly dry and tasteless flourless chocolate cake. Luckily I was able to try it again a while later and it turned out great. I hope to one day re-do this challenge because unfortunately, my "anniversary" Daring Bakers challenge was a complete fail. This torte is pretty simple if you think about it. It's several layers of sponge cake with chocolate buttercream and then a sponge layer coated in caramel. I first ran in to problems creating the sponge layers. My first few layers were too thin and were not coming off the parchment so I added some flour to the batter and made thicker layers. I was about to give up because I was running out of time (housewarming party to go to), but I finally got about five sponges to work with. The chocolate buttercream was a breeze, but even with chilling it was a little too soupy. The caramel was an absolute disaster. I now know that lemon juice has no business in caramel. It was repulsive.



Luckily, I was able to drown my sorrows in the pudding-like buttercream. At least this wasn't a super expensive failure. I took a bottle of wine to the housewarming instead of the cake fail.



PS, Don't be fooled by the semi-normal slice pictures. This was a total disaster. I hope to try it again soon.