Italian Almond Torte

Ever since I saw this recipe in Alice Medrich's book "Pure Desserts", I've come close to making it several times but then backed off. I kept thinking that without egg yolks or butter (or oil) the cake would turn out dry (I know what you're thinking, I should have known better... we're talking Alice Medrich here). Needless to say, all this changed when, by chance, I visited the Baking Obsession blog which I found through Passionate About Baking. The beautiful picture of the cake did not appear to be that of a dry cake. Au contraire. So I decided to give it a shot. I followed the original recipe and used unblanched almonds since I'm allergic to hazelnuts, and I used Ghirardelli's unsweetened chocolate. The other thing I did was cut the recipe in half and use a 6" spring form pan. I won't repeat the recipe in this post. Instead I'd like to share with you a few pictures I took during the process of making the Italian Almond Torte.

Right before it went into the oven:



If you look closely, you'll notice one of my tricks to having nice and smooth edges. Not to mention, easy cake removal from the pan. I use cooking spray for the glue and parchment paper strips to put on the inside of the pan. This works great for cheesecakes too, by the way.



Once the torte was baked and cooled, we enjoyed this intensely chocolatey torte. It was very fudgy. The almonds gave the torte that nice crunchy texture which worked great against the smooth texture of the chocolate part. I don't like my desserts to be overly sweet. My hubby, however, said he would have enjoyed this torte a bit more if it were a touch sweeter. We ate it plain, but if served with sweetened whipped cream, it might have been OK. Don't take my word for it. I'd highly encourage you to try it yourself.