In our family we have always been great Sacher Torte lovers. My aunt has always celebrated her birthday on the beach on the 18th of August with a Sacher (!). It was bought in the only good pastry close to the sea. And for years it was a challenge… trying to find the right recipe, to make a torte as much as possible similar to the one eaten in the Café Sacher in Vienna
Luckily (not because I don’t like my beloved brother but because I love Vienna), five years ago my brother moved to Vienna therefore, we were able to taste many many times the REAL ONE AND UNIQUE Sacher Torte. Thanks to this we were able to make comparisons and to adjust the aim. At the end of all these studies, mostly conducted by my beloved Aunt, we are now able to propose our Sacher Torte recipe, the result of years of harsh struggles, tastings and endless tests in order to the seek the perfect icing (the big issue for all the chef who want to cook the Sacher torte).
I recommend: cook it one day before serving the cake, it will be better. Anyhow, let’s see how to do, step by step.
Ingredients (for a cake tin of 18 cm (little one) if you want the cake pan of 24 cm (big) multiply it by 2)
- 3 organic eggs
- 63 grams of soft butter
- 63 grams of flour 00
- 75 g sugar
- 20 grams of powdered sugar
- 75 grams of dark chocolate*
- 100 grams of apricot jelly melted in a bit ‘of water
- a sewing wire
For the frosting (chocolate fondant) – for 18 cm cake. For that at least 24 cm multiplied by 3.
- 150 grams of dark chocolate*+25 gr of water
- 150 grams of sugar+ 50 gr of water
- sugar thermometer
* Use chocolate with 70% of chocolate and whose first ingredient is cocoa paste, not Sugar: IS VERY IMPORTANT
In a bowl, place the softened butter (must be soft, so leave it out of the fridge at least 1 hour) and blend it with low-speed whisks. Add the icing sugar and mix it very well. At this point, add the egg yolks, one at a time, blending well the mixture before adding the next egg yolk. Be thorough and patient at this point because this is the key for the success of your Sacher.
Chop the chocolate and heated in a bain-marie. Chill it a bit (so it won’t “bake” the egg) and add to the butter mixture, eggs and sugar, mixing everything very well. Add the flour and stir well until the mixture is smooth and creamy.
Beat eggs white until stiff and dry and, when they are pretty swollen, gradually add the sugar and continue beating until the mixture turns white shiny and firm (meringue). Again, do not get tired and beat it well.
At this point gently incorporated the white beat eggs with the eggs mixture and chocolate. Do it slowly, little by little and stir well so that the egg does not deflate: you will get a light and creamy coffee-colored.
Butter a baking dish and then bake at 150 ° C (with a pot of water in it) and cook for 45 minutes-1 hour until it is cooked to the toothpick test. Do not hurry and cook slowly. Note that it is not a leavened cake and it will not grow: the thing that gives the volume are only the egg whites.
Once baked, after 10 minutes, remove from the cake pot and leave to chill completely it on a rack.
Once chilled cut it in half with a sewing wire. How to do? With a knife nicked where you want to cut the cake. Take a piece of sewing wire and pass it around the cake in the slot made with the knife. Cross the wire and pull, you will get a perfect cake cutting (below you can see the video)
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Now pass the jam through a sieve to remove pieces and heat lightly on the stove to make it more fluid.
With a long knife you lift the top of the inside and stuffed with good apricot jam.
Carefully reposition the upper cap and with a boxcutter you make the edges slightly sloping top (will serve to bring down better glaze). Cover now the entire surface of the cake with a light layer of jam (you cna use a spatula or and hands if necessary).
IMPORTANT: LEAVE THE CAKE TO REST AND DRY for a few hours until the jam is no longer liquid and sticky to avoid that during frosting does jam and icing will mix together.
At this point place the cake on a support equal to its diameter or less to it and laid on a glass or bowl so that it is raised from the table: underneath all the structure with aluminum foil or a plate.
Prepare the icing.
Chop the chocolate and together with the water and melt it gently in a small pot raised on the stove (or in a bain-marie).
In a non-stick pot put the sugar and the water and heat up to reach the temperature of 110 ° C. It will form a sugar syrup a bit gelatinous.
Drop the syrup into the chocolate “drop by drop” and stir very gently with a spatula until it become soflty fluid, at this point add the rest of the syrup in a larger amount in a “flush mode”, always stirring, untile the of od syrup: you got the chocolate fondant. At this poit it is necessary to wait that icing will chill a little bit, it has to be similar to a yogurth in order to slip off on the cake. If icing will be too warm the glze will result too thin, if it will be too cold the risk is that it will solidify while you are puring, ruining your cake cover. It is the most delicate part fo the recipes. If you thinsk to have waited too long you can re-heat the glaze again.
Pour the whole icing on the cake in the the center, forming concentric waves. If necessary, but you must be very fast, use a very large spatula strokes the top to obtain a uniform glaze. With glaze made redundant settled down the edges with a spatula or with the drip pan from the top down (not sideways).
Watch the video even though is in Italian!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tW_mn84EZU
If there was some problem with the frosting, a solution could be to put the cake in a hot oven for a few seconds… but honestly I’ve never tried! (I just heard)
Let cool and dry glaze without touching it until it is dry (it should not stick).
Serve the next day with just sweetened whipped cream.
To summarize here there are five Golden Rules for the success of your Sacher Torte:
1. First GOLDEN RULE of SACHER: Make it the day before
2. Second GOLDEN RULE of SACHER: weighing the ingredients with a digital scale (above all for the icing)
3. Third GOLDEN RULE of SACHER: eggs must be built slowly and slammed to death one by one, and mounted whits must be incorporated very slowly.
4. Fourth GOLDEN RULE of SACHER: used chocolate to 60% and with the first ingredient “cocoa mass.”
5. Fifth GOLDEN RULE of SACHER: the frosting should be hot and should not be pouring spatula (only on the edges if necessary)
CONFESSION: We must confess that one of the – many – times that we went to eat at the Cafe Sacher we brought secretly a slice of our Sacher homemade (survived a plane ride and a little ‘squashed poor). To do the final test, head ot head, bite to bite.
Finally we believe we made it! texture, flavors, colors, scents are all there. And the icing too!
