October 23rd was a pretty good day…..and a pretty indulgent day. Its a good thing the first thing I wanted to do on my birthday was run 8 miles…………not that 800 calories burned came even close to negating even a small portion of what I consumed that day.
handfuls upon handfuls of chocolate covered hazelnuts and razcherries, glasses of delicious west coast wine, homemade battered fish (courtesy of my brother), a plateful of mashed squash (by far my favorite veggie), and then came the birthday cake.
I had originally thought I would just whip up some kladdkaka, but then I decided that one only turns 28 once and one should have something fairly spectacular in the cake department to do so. Plus, it was my birthday and all I really wanted to do was run, bake, and visit with my family.
I had been eying the Chocolate torte recipe from simplyrecipes.com for a while. In fact, that’s where I got the crust that I had originally used on the kladdkaka. This recipe is also known as Death by Chocolate….and good lord, what a way to go.
- 1 1/2 pounds of chocolate - YES. One and a half POUNDS of chocolate.
I would say that you only serve cheesecake-size portions of this desert, but really, I can put down a decent size piece of cheesecake. The portion I show in the picture below was far too big for me and was almost too large for my brother. So please note, in all seriousness, this recipe could serve 20 people!
Chocolate Ganache Torte from simplyrecipes.com
Ingredients
The Shell
- One box “Nabisco’s Famous” chocolate wafers, or your favorite chocolate nut cookies (I cannot for the life of me find these cookies anywhere. I used Chocolate Teddy Grahams and they worked very well. Much better than the Oreos I tried last time.)
- 2/3 cup pecans
- Melted butter (1/4 cup or less) – I used the full 1/4 cup
- 9 inch spring-form pan - I was at my mom’s place and she didn’t have one. Though a pie plate lined with foiled worked just fine.
The Filling
- 1 1/2 to 2 pounds of the best available semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate, well chopped into small pieces (use brick chocolate, not chips) – I used 1 1/2 pounds.
- More melted butter (up to one stick or 1/2 cup) - I used the full 1/2 cup
- 1 cup (or more) heavy whipping cream
The Sauce
- Melted butter (one stick, a 1/2 cup, or a bit more) - I used a 1/2 cup
- Cane sugar (a pound or less) – I used the full pound
- Heavy whipping cream (1 cup – or more) – Only had 1 cup left at this point
Method
1 Prepare the crust. Chop/process the wafers and pecans until fine, add enough melted butter to press this into the spring-form pan (along the bottom and halfway up the sides). Bake in oven at 350°F for 20 minutes, put aside.
2 While the crust is baking, prepare the filling. In double boiler melt the butter and then add the chocolate. When chocolate is swirl-able, slowly add the whipping cream, stirring slowly, until mixture is blended and smooth. Pour mixture into the prepared shell. Refrigerate for at least four hours.
3 Prepare the sauce before serving (the sauce, served warm, should accompany the torte, served cold.) Melt butter over fairly high heat. Add sugar until saturated (the heat must be high enough for the sugar to dissolve; when no more will dissolve, the solution is saturated). Stirring only occasionally, let the mixture “burn” just enough to turn into a rich caramel. Add the cream, stirring briskly until well blended and smooth. Strain if necessary for smoothness.

This is a picture of the crust before patting it into the pie plate.

In case you were wondering what 1 1/2 pounds of chopped chocolate looked like.

(Sorry about the poor picture quality. A proper DSLR camera is on my wish list….maybe in a couple of years. *sigh*)
The final product. I chose to drizzle the caramel sauce over the pieces individually rather than pour it over the entire torte. By keeping the caramel in a separate container, we could then reheat the caramel and have the warm gooeyness with the many leftover pieces that would be eaten over the next few days. And yes, you do need to serve something on the side with this. I really thought the vanilla ice cream went perfectly. You could do a simple whipped cream, but this cake is so rich and the warm caramel sauce works well with the cold ice cream.
I call this birthday torte a massive success. It was not a cheap dessert to make (the chocolate alone was over $9 and I could have certainly purchased higher quality chocolate), but it does make for many servings. The richness of it really made it a decadent treat that must be appreciated and savored slowly. There was very little talking in the living room as we all sat contemplating the warm caramel, the dense chocolate, and the perfectly contrasting ice cream. Or, we were probably all so silent because if we moved, our stomachs may have actually burst from the vast quantities of food we have been consuming all day!