- Whattup you guys, Chef Billy Parisi here from billyparisi.com and I
hope you've got a sweet tooth ready because we are gonna
make an amazing Torta Caprese or in other words, a chocolate
almond flourless cake and we're doing it in
partnership with Bob's Red Mill. If you've been following me for a minute, you know that I'm on this mission to find the most authentic versions of recipes, whether it's French,
Italian, whatever it is, obviously I've been on
a little Italian kick, well my last name is
Parisi, so you're gonna have to deal with it for a little while until I'm uninterested and need
to move to the next country. But for now, we're gonna
make a Torta Caprese, which literally just is a
chocolate almond flourless cake. It's delicious, it's rich, it's decadent, you are going to love it. When doing research, this
isn't one of those recipes that actually offered a
ton of history behind it. It wasn't one of those
from 200 or 300 years ago. From what I could find,
and I don't even know if this is true, I'm gonna
guess not, from 1920, the Island of Capris which
is off the coast of Pompeii and Naples in Italy, more
central Italy if you will, some baker forgot to
put flour in his cake. This is what he came up with. I don't know if that's real. To me, knowing Italy and Sicily
and knowing that the almond is an absolute staple there,
I'm guessing this was made with intent with purpose because
it's absolutely delicious. This would be one heck of a screw up. But, and I'm not saying it didn't happen, however, I'm guessing my version may be a little bit more real, I don't know. Don't take my word for
it, but that's all I got. Anyways, let's make this cake. And when it comes to making any cake, I like to measure everything
out and then assemble and because I've had
some really rough recipes that have ounces, I'm gonna do grams and translate to ounces for
you, but I wanna make sure that it's absolutely
precise, so grams it is. The first thing we need to
measure out is some chocolate. Next we're gonna be using Bob's Red Mill super fine almond flour for
the almonds in this recipe. Extremely high quality, great flavor and perfect consistency for this cake. Once that is measured out, go
ahead and set it to the side. Next thing we wanna measure
out is some unsalted butter. Followed up by some sugar. And now we need to separate
the egg yolks from the whites, so go ahead and give it a
crack and sort of rocking the egg yolk back and
forth with the whites dripping down into a container. Go ahead and separate those. Add the yolk to another container. Now we're gonna set everything to the side and begin preparing. Making cakes or baking
anything can be a science, but in a lot of American versions, it's more of mix wet separate from dry, combine them, add things one
at a time until it's combined. It was cool when I
looked at the procedures for this Torta Caprese and what I did find makes perfect sense so follow along. There's a couple of moving
parts, not a lot of ingredients, but a little bit to do,
so in a standing mixer with the whisk attachment, we are gonna add in the egg whites. We wanna mix this on high for
maybe just 30 to 45 seconds until it starts to come together. Then we're gonna add in half of the sugar that we weighed out. We wanna further mix this
until stiff peaks are formed. We wanna make a meringue. Probably gonna take four to
six minutes for this to happen. Once it is to this
consistency, let's go ahead and remove the meringue from the bowl because we're gonna use
it in a few minutes. Add it to another bowl. And what I'm gonna do is simply
keep it in the refrigerator, keep it nice and cool, which is gonna help keep this cake nice and
cool before we bake it. Come back, now we need
to melt some chocolate. So go ahead and add your
bittersweet chocolate that you measured out
to a microwave safe bowl or glass bowl or even a metal bowl because I'm gonna use a double boiler. Sorry, that's the more
traditional part of me. Go over to the cooktop, add it right to a pot of simmering water. We literally just want to mix
this using a rubber scraper until the chocolate has completely melted. Like I said before, if
you wanna microwave this to melt, great, whatever's
easiest for you all. Once it is melted, we're
gonna take it out of that pot. Just go back over to the
countertop where our stand mixer is and now we're gonna
mix a few other things. Go ahead and add in your softened butter. We're gonna give that a
nice whisk like we did with the egg whites for
just a minute or two. Next, we're gonna add
in the remaining sugar. We're gonna whisk for another two minutes. Now what we wanna do is add
in one egg yolk at a time until it is completely mixed in. And now here's a cool part. Instead of mixing it and over mixing it, go ahead and take the bowl off the mixer. We wanna fold in all of our ingredients. Let's go ahead and fold
in the Bob's Red Mill almond flour that we weighed out. Next, we are gonna add in the chocolate. Get all of it out of that
bowl and we wanna fold this in until it is completely
mixed in to the butter and the sugar and the egg
yolks and the almond meal. Once it is combined, go
back to the refrigerator, pull out that meringue,
the same exact process. Add that in, fold it in until
it is completely combined. No white from the meringue
should be able to be seen. So fold it, take the time to do it. Be gentle with it 'cause
we don't want to over mix. Now set it to the side and
grab a 10 inch springform pan. We need to butter it up, so grease it up on all parts and all inside,
every square centimeter of this springform pan. Next, add in some cocoa powder. We wanna give it a shake
and hit it and pat it around until the cocoa powder
completely has covered the springform pan where
the butter was put down. Go ahead and set the
cocoa powder to the side. And now what we want to do is
scrape all of that goodness from the cake right into the pan. And then go ahead and try to
level it out a little bit. Maybe just smash it down,
whatever you need to do like you're sort of
decorating icing on a cake. Just sort of move it back and forth. Now go over to the oven on 350 degrees. Going to take in between 35 and 40 minutes for this Torta Caprese to finish cooking. Hoo hoo, this cake is done and
it smells incredible in here. Take it out of the oven,
what we wanna do is let it completely cool
until room temperature which takes about an hour, it's gonna be torturous for you, so I apologize. At that point, let's go ahead and remove the springform portion of the pan. And using some powdered
sugar, you wanna hit it all over the top of this Torta Caprese. It's gonna be absolutely beautiful with the contrast of black and white. Boom, we are finished, let's go ahead and cut off a slice and try this out. The cake looks absolutely
incredible, cannot wait to try it! And you may notice that
mine is a little bit thicker than some of the other Torta Capreses. It's just me, I'm not really into like the thin almond
cakes, I like it to have some girth in there. So I made a little bit extra, whatever. It's gonna taste good. Oh man, oh that is dangerous. Coffee or milk with this
in the morning, ooh! Man is that good. All right, I want to
finish eating this up. We'll catch up with you all next week. Thanks for watching,
thanks Bob's Red Mill. We'll see you all later.
