Cake 5: Dobostorte

I’m a bit behind on my cake making, but should get back on track in the next week. We’re up to Cake Number 5—I’ve begun to make half cakes in order to ensure they’re all eaten before the next cake is baked. So here is my splendid, seven-layer, half-a-dobostorte.

Dobostorte was always a mythical cake to me; something my mother learned how to make from a woman who had had four heart attacks. But now seemed as good a time as any to give it a try. It’s seven layers of white cake sandwiched with a rich chocolate cream, and topped with a layer of caramel.

I used a recipe from epicurious to make the filling. It consists to beaten egg yolks, a sugar syrup, butter, and chocolate. I’d never before made an icing like this, and I found that it yielded a much softer, creamier buttercream than egg whites do. I didn’t add quite the full amount of butter either, stopping when I felt the cream was just beginning to taste buttery. In my mind, the focus should be chocolate, not butter, and though I want the richness of butter, it shouldn’t be the main flavor.

I wasn’t quite as happy with the cake. I used the recipe form the Time Life Cooking of the Austrian Empire book, but I found the layers were too thin. I think dobostorte should be an impressive, towering cake—you feel a little cheated when your seven layers only give you a couple of inches. The layers weren’t leavened at all, not by baking powder or by beaten eggs; rather, the batter was like a sugar cookie dough. I spread the batter into 8” circles on a baking pan (expect for the last one, which was an 8” semi circle, to yield the requisite 7 layers). They came out more as thin, slightly crisp cookie-like layers, only about an eighth to a quarter of an inch thick, when I was hoping for around three-quarters.

The layers are assembled with the chocolate cream sandwiched in between, but the top layer is first glazed with caramel. I was a bit late in marking the cake into wedges while the caramel was still soft, so it tended to crack when the cake was cut. The top layer, being less flexible than the others, also tended to separate when you bit into the cake, but the flavors were perfect. Even the crispness of the layers worked well, though I would have preferred something a little lighter of offset the richness of the cream. Next time, I’ll try using the epicurious recipe for the cake as well.