Italian Flourless Chocolate Torte "Torta Caprese" - Food Wishes

[Music] hello this is Chef John from foodwishes.com with Italian flourless chocolate tours that's right I'm gonna share how I like to make torta caprese which apparently was invented on the island of Capri although I've been there and I didn't see any of this but In fairness I was only there six hours four of which I spent inside the Blue Grotto but anyway if you're looking for something very simple and easy and super sexy to serve to your lover chocolate lover or otherwise this is it and to get started the first thing we should do is prep an 8 inch cake pan and by prep I mean butter generously and then I also like to cut out and place a round piece of parchment in the bottom and then once our pan is greased and papered we'll toss in a little bit of flour and then we'll sort of rotate and shake and knock the pan around and that flour will stick to the butter and this is going to help our cake come out very easily after it's baked and once that looks good we can go ahead and knock out the excess but don't throw it away scrape it up and sift it back into your canister and that's it our pan is prepped and we can move on to our chocolate and what I have here is six ounces of dark chocolate which as you can see has been broken up and then to this we will add some cubed up butter and we'll grab our spatula and head to the stove where we have a saucepan of barely simmering water set over low heat and what we'll do is place our bowl of chocolate and butter on top and we will simply wait for everything to melt and once it looks a little something like this it's not a bad idea to give it a stir so we can sort of see where we're at but also stirring butter and chocolate is very enjoyable and yes you can definitely do this step in the microwave but you know what the house was kind of dry so I decided to multitask so I melted chocolate while humidifying the air oh yeah it's good for the pores but anyway once everything's melted or extremely close to it we'll go ahead and remove that from the Heat and give it one last stir to make sure it's very very smooth and if it's looking good and mine was looking very good we can go ahead and toss in some unsweetened cocoa powder along with a nice big pinch of salt and then two optional ingredients about a tablespoon of coffee liqueur plus a very small Shake of cayenne all right barely a hint and then we'll finish this up adding one cup of almond meal also known in some parts is almond flour and we'll take our spatula and give this a mix and yes it probably would have been easier to use a whisk but you know what I already dirtied my spatula and now I'm on a mission to make this entire recipe using just one utensil but no matter what you use make sure you keep stirring and keep mixing until everything's been very thoughtfully and very thoroughly combined and once it is we can set that aside and we can crack four large eggs into another Bowl to which we will add a little touch of white sugar and then we'll grab our electric hand mixer and we will mix this on high until it's very light and very fluffy and very very thick oh and pro tip if you use room temperature eggs which I did this mixture will whip up faster and to a higher volume than if you use cold eggs and yes you can do this by hand with a whisk but the bad news is it will take forever the good news is though according to recent made-up studies if you do it by hand you'll burn the same number of calories as one portion but either way once our mixture is nice and thick and fluffy like this we'll go ahead and grab our chocolate mixture and we will transfer that in and then we'll use our spatula or macay spoonula to fold that in until it's just combined and while I do this let's go ahead and talk about final texture since there are basically three ways you can go here okay you can just dump in the chocolate and then whisk it in not worrying about losing too much air which will give you a very firm dense texture and then the second method which I'm using here is disorder semi gently folded in all right bringing that mixture from the sides and bottom up over the top and then every once in a while giving it the occasional stir and unlike whisking it in this method will preserve a lot of those air bubbles which will produce something a little bit lighter and that's the texture I enjoy most for this and then the third method which would be the lightest version would be to actually separate the eggs and just whisk in the yolks and then beat the whites into a meringue and fold those in very gently but for me all that extra work to get just a little bit extra lightness really is not worth it so I'm definitely a fold and stir guy but no matter which method you use once that chocolate mixture has been Incorporated we can go ahead and transfer everything into our prepared pan oh and if you can try to get it all in the pan and not on the table I mean come on that pan is a pretty big Target and I have no idea why I was trying to transfer it in from like two feet away but anyway once that's been transferred in we'll go ahead and give that the old tapatappa just to bring those few larger bubbles up to the surface which can cause holes and that's it we can now transfer this into the center of a 350 degree oven for about 25 to 30 minutes or until it looks like this and this appears to have cooked long enough but it's a little tricky with flourless cakes to tell by looking or touching so what we'll do is test with a wooden skier near the center which won't come out completely clean but almost clean okay A little chocolate smudge is fine but if it's covered with what looks like raw batter put it back in but this was perfect and if it is what we'll do is let it cool in the pan for 30 minutes during which time it's definitely going to sink down a little bit but that's normal and fine and at any point while we're waiting we can take a thin knife and go around the outside around the outside around the outside just to make sure our tort is not sticking to the pan and then one side has cooled for about 30 minutes I'm going to place a round piece of parchment on top and then place a plate over that and we will flip that over and because we professionally prep the pan this is going to slide right out with no effort revealing a perfectly smooth surface or what also could happen is it sticks and you have to bang it a few times and it comes out without a perfectly smooth surface okay so both those things can happen and often do but don't worry once this cools and firms up we are probably going to flip it over anyway and serve it with the other side up but the point is we have options and that's it we will simply let this cool completely before serving although I highly recommend this goes in the fridge overnight since I think the flavor is much better and also I much prefer serving this chilled so that's what I did I went ahead and wrapped it up and popped it in the fridge and then I pulled it out the next day and I decided to go ahead and flip this over because I thought this side would look a little better which it did except for a few crumbs here and there that flaked off which like an absolute lunatic I wadded up and used to plug some holes because I have a serious problem but anyway once we fix up whatever needs fixing up I'm going to go ahead and finish this off by dusting the top of cocoa in a very generous dusting at that and once that's accomplished you could just serve it like this but I'm not going to I have one more trick up my sleeve well actually two tricks but the first one is I'm going to take a couple ramekins like this which will allow me to lay this cooling rack right over the surface so that it's almost but not quite touching the cocoa oh and right here I decide to give it a little turn so you will see the lines I'm about to make at an angle and the lines I'm talking about are going to be created by dusting over some powdered sugar and what's going to happen once we dust the top of this and then we remove that rack it's going to leave some beautiful and I think very provocative lines and then for one last touch I'm going to do a little hard design in the center with six strategically placed raspberries and yes I was very upset and annoyed that my finger hit the powdered sugar and made that Mark so I did what almost no one would do I grabbed a little bit of powdered sugar on the tip of the knife and I spent about 10 minutes fixing that up but anyway that kind of attention to detail will be up to you I mean you are after all the cupid of whether or not to be stupid before the record I regret nothing including what I'm about to say and that's it once we have our heart on the top of the tort we can go ahead and cut a wedge and serve up and I garnish with three more raspberries plus a nice pipe in a whipped cream although I wouldn't say no to a scoop of vanilla ice cream and then I grabbed a fork and went in for a taste and that my friends I think is the perfect flourless chocolate cake I mean tort really same difference okay flour does have its advantages as far as help creating the structure of a cake and giving us a nice crumb but what it also does is dilute the chocolate flavor but here we don't have that problem okay this is pure chocolatey goodness with zero starchy distractions but because we fairly carefully folded we did retain a good amount of air bubbles in that batter so looks to the contrary the texture is surprisingly light and not super firm in stagey so to summarize I absolutely loved how this came out oh and for the record that whipped cream is not sweetened all right well it's not super super sweet the cake has plenty of sugar so for me an unsweetened whipped cream along with those tart fresh berries are the perfect things to serve this with and while I really do love the coffee liqueur in this you could also use something like Amaretto or Rum or any flavorful booze of your choice but no matter what you use this gorgeous flourless chocolate torque could not be easier and not only do I think you're gonna love it but I think whoever that special someone you serve it to will as well which is why I really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe much more info as usual dissolves enjoy [Music]

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 129,161

Keywords: Chocolate, Flourless, Torte, Italian, torta, Valentine’s, Day, Caprese, dessert, sweet, chef, john, food, wishes, cooking

Id: IF7Rd_7vwiE

Length: 10min 40sec (640 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 03 2023