TWD: 15 Minute Chocolate Amaretti Torte

This was not one of my more successful baking endeavors. Well, I take that back a little. In the end, the torte was delicious. It was really, really, ugly, though. And slightly underbaked. And the glaze never set. And.... you get the picture.

First off, I was so excited that this was a "good for Passover" recipe. Strictly speaking, it's not K for P, but it fits into my Passover parameters. The cake has amaretti cookies as one of the ingredients. I found mine at Cost Plus. Straight up, I liked these cookies. They had a nice almond flavor. The other bonus to this was right in the title. It takes little or no time to put the cake together and in to the oven.

I took a cue from some of the other bakers and went the mini route. Cutting the recipe in half was easy. Dorie's recipe calls for a food processor. Mine has a 13 cup bowl. It's great for a lot of things. Half of this recipe was not one of them. Instead I used the hated mini prep for the amaretti and almond grinding. The rest I mixed with my equally hated hand mixer. It did come together easily. I used Baker's Joy (best thing for baking ever) to prep my pans. I used three 3" pans, and half a recipe fit just fine. Because my tortes were so small, I was a little overly cautious about baking time. I could really smell the tortes with about six minutes left on the timer. That tends to make me nervous. And when I looked at them, they looked dry on top, just as Dorie suggested they might. I cooled them on the counter.

And this is what the torte looked like.

I don't think I can adequately describe the canyon in the middle of the torte. I tried to photograph it, but it didn't really come across.

After it cooled, I flipped it out of the pan only to find a similar canyon on the other side. It's hard to describe. A weird hourglass lying on its side? A chocolate torte bow tie? A chocolate torte bialy? Again, the photo doesn't do it justice.

Anyway, on to the glaze. Just a bit of helpful advice here -- when a recipe calls for heavy cream, don't try to substitute skim milk. I thought you should know that. See, when you use skim milk, your glaze never quite solidifies. (On a side note, when you use this recipe and substitute skim milk, you get an amazing hot chocolate.)

Here it is "glazed". I think the canyon is coming through a bit more.

And one last shot, a little closer up.

Even with the underbaking, thin glaze, and canyons, this was a delicious cake. The almond flavor came through just enough to compliment the chocolate. The glaze tasted rich and chocolately. I skipped the almond whipped cream. I certainly wasn't going to try to substitute skim milk there. I would absolutely try this cake again. Next time, maybe I'll get it right.

Thanks to the fabulous Holly of Phe/MOM/enon for choosing this recipe. Go to her blog if you want to see what this is supposed to look like.