Journal

Nutty Torte that happens to be Gluten Free

Nutty Torte that happens to be Gluten Free

This recipe exhibits the match made in heaven of chocolate and nuts. It is a great recipe for using up the 3 to 5 open packages that have been hiding in your pantry behind your chocolate stash and should be used reasonably soon. I personally like it with hazelnuts (exposed to Nutella as a child) and almonds. The torte also happens to be GLUTEN FREE, yay. Why am I yelling?

Ingredients

  • 300 g nuts (to your liking) whole or ground
  • 300 g chocolate (70% plus please, for a cocoa oomph and less sugar)
  • 250 g unsalted butter at room temperature
  • 100 g sugar
  • 6 eggs (separated, in a bowl where you can whip them)
  • Pinch of cream of tartar (optional) 
  • Pinch of salt

Even if I sound like a broken record, shy away from compound chocolate (chocolate that contains any other fat(s) than cocoa butter). It pays off to choose quality ingredients. I have some chocolate buttons here that will give you a great result, worth every cent.

How to

Prepare a 24cm round cake tin by greasing it. If you have a loose bottom or a spring form, it will make your life easier. 

In case you use whole nuts put them in a mixer of some sort and grind to a 'flour', 'powder' etc. If they are already ground it will save you this step but still add them to the mixer.

Add 200 g of the chocolate to the nuts and blitz again, put the chocolate/nut mixture it into a bowl. Hold back the other 100g of chocolate for later. Chuck in the salt.

Use the same mixer bowl or if you prefer a kitchen machine with a paddle attachment or a handheld mixer and cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks one at a time, add the nuts and chocolate and mix it. 

There is your flavour component for the torte, next we need some lift, so we don't end up with a dense chocolate brick.

In a separate bowl, whip/beat the egg whites with a small pinch of acid such as cream of tartar to reach maximum volume and stabilize the mixture. Please refrain from running to the supermarket to just get the cream of tartar, not the end of the world if you don't have it.

Fold a bit of the whipped egg white into the butter/egg yolk/chocolate/nut mixture and add the remaining egg whites bit by bit. Easy there Tiger, you don't want to lose the air you incorporated in the egg white. Nice folding action.

Now transfer the lot into your prepared cake tin.

Remember we still have 100g of chocolate to use, maybe 90 after nibbling a bit.

Push the chocolate in a random pattern into the batter, try to distribute evenly. 

Every oven is different. So it is difficult to give exact cooking time. Mine was done in 1 h at 180 C (non fan forced)

I dust it with a nice dark cocoa powder and serve it with my favourite vanilla ice cream.

Tip for buying ice cream

Weight matters. If you have two ice creams of the same flavour with the same volume, for example 1 litre, buy the one that is heavier and you get more ice cream and less air for your money. You can thank me later. 

Song for beating egg whites and shaking the hips

Recipe credit: Jamie Oliver

Leave a comment