The King of Tortes

I've been admiring Passionate about baking's Chocolate walnut torte ever since it was posted in early November. Yummee only!

Finally made it yesterday, the results in my opinion were fairly disastrous. To start with, the walnuts refused to get ground finely. I was worried they'd get oily and bitter (like almonds) if I over did them in the food processor. Next, I had to turn to my husband's expertise (he excels in meringue making and baking in general) for the egg beating - the whites refused to form peaks even after 15 mins. My patience gave way after those 15 mins and I found myself mixing (instead of folding) all the ingredients and baking them.

The end result was quite a surprise, it was definitely not a good looking torte, but very tasty, especially when chilled.

Ingredients:

Butter - 2 tbsps, chilled
Walnuts - 1 1/2 cups
Eggs - 4
Granulated sugar - 1/4 cup

Vanilla essence - 1 1/2 tsp
Powdered sugar - 1/4 cup
Dark chocolate - 100 grams, melted and cooled
Instant coffee powder - 3 tsps
Hot water - 2 tbsps

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180 C.
2. One is supposed to use a spring form pan, I don't own one, so just used a regular 9 inch circular pan lined with butter paper.
3. Run walnuts in the food processor with 1 tbsp of sugar till ground. Drop in 2 tbsps of chilled butter & pulse till it all comes together (this did not happen :-( when I made it)
4. Press nuts evenly onto bottom and sides of the pan.
5. Separate the egg, putting the whites into a large bowl - ensure not a single drop of yellow gets into the white.
6. Beat the yolks with an electric mixer on high speed about 5 minutes or until thick and and the colour lightens to a lemony yellow
7. Gradually beat in 1/4 cup of the granulated sugar & the essence.
8. Beat in melted chocolate with a spatula.
9. Dissolve instant coffee powder in hot water, stir into chocolate mixture.
10. Wash and dry beaters of mixer (very important - I was in too much of a hurry, which might have been the reason for the flat egg whites.
11. In a large bowl, beat egg whites until soft peaks form.
12. Gradually add the remaining 1/4 cup of powdered sugar, beat until stiff peaks form. (Tip from the husband: sugar helps in the formation of stiff peaks, hence proportion is very important) .
13. Pour chocolate mixture over the egg whites; gently fold in (I mixed away in agony).
14. Spread evenly in spring form pan.
    Bake for 20-25 minutes of until set.
15. Cool in pan on wire rack for 15 minutes.

To serve, sift powdered sugar over the torte - I made a star shaped pattern on the cake oops torte.

My share of the yummy torte.