Mozart Torte
Mozart Torte is one of my favorite and proudest creations, developed during the second season at Seven Layers. It consists of a nut and chocolate flaked butter sponge cake which is split and sandwiched with apricot jam, then enrobed in a bittersweet chocolate glaze. The flavor profile is rooted in the Viennese cake and pastry tradition.
When I began thinking of a new room temperature cake for the shop, I focused on using existing ingredients and preparations. For the base cake, I started with our butter sponge which was baked daily as the starting point for several desserts. I thought the fabulous Italian roasted chopped hazelnuts in stock for the daily batch of Financiers would be interesting added to the batter.
Wanting to make the sponge truly unique, I decided to also add finely chopped chocolate, which was very easy to produce by running a knife down the edge of our 11 lb. Callebaut bars. Good apricot jam was around for the occasional Sacher Torte, as was chocolate glaze. With a little experimentation, the Seven Layers’ Mozart Torte was born.
On the first taste this week, I was reminded how good this torte is – moist, a lovely balance of flavors, not overly rich, with a good hit of chocolate from the glaze. It is perfect as is, without the usual Viennese enhancement of mit schlag (with whipped cream).
As with many baking projects, the components may be done in stages. The cake can be baked, wrapped well and frozen for up to three weeks. The simple syrup is fine kept refrigerated for weeks. The ganache for crumb coating is done a day or two ahead.
So, put Mozart’s complete Piano Sonatas on Spotify and get to work.
Mozart Torte
| Yield: One 8-inch cake | # of Servings: 8 to 10 |
Ingredients
Ganache:
4 oz chocolate, 64% to 66%, wafers or broken up
½ cup (4 fl oz) heavy cream
Cake:
6 ½ tbl (3.25 oz / 92 g) unsalted butter, melted
⅔ cup (3 oz / 85 g) pastry or all-purpose flour
4 tsp (.4 oz / 12 g) cornstarch
¼ cup (1.2 oz / 34 g) finely chopped chocolate1
¼ cup (1.1 oz / 31 g) chopped roasted hazelnuts
5 large egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla extract
5 large egg whites
1 pinch salt
¾ cup + 1 tbl (5.8 oz / 164 g) sugar
Filling:
¼ cup Simple Syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
⅓ cup apricot jam
Chocolate Glaze:
4.5 oz chocolate, 61% to 64%, wafers or broken up
3 oz unsalted butter, room temperature
2 tsp light corn syrup
Clef symbol:
2 oz white or milk chocolate, wafers or chopped, melted
Special equipment needed:
- 8” by 2” cake pan
- Parchment paper circle, 8” cardboard circle
- One medium mixing bowl – for the melted butter.
- One large mixing bowl – for the egg yolks.
- Handheld or countertop mixer
- Instant read thermometer
- Long spatula for glazing the cake
Pre-recipe preparations:
- Make ganache the day before.
- Butter the cake pan, line with parchment circle, butter the parchment.
- Preheat the oven to 350°F
Directions
Ganache – (Day before)
- Bring heavy cream to the simmer in a small saucepan. Add the chocolate, let sit for a minute, then stir until smooth.
- Pour into small container, cover with plastic film, poke a few holes with paring knife. Let sit overnight.
Baking the cake:
- Preheat the oven to 350°F
- Melt the butter, and place in a medium-sized mixing bowl. Keep warm.
- Sift together the dry ingredients. Set aside.
- Mix together the chocolate and the chopped hazelnuts. Set aside.
- Place the egg yolks in a large mixing bowl. Beat lightly with the vanilla extract, just enough to combine and break up the yolks. This is the bowl where the final mixing will occur.
- Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt on medium speed until soft peaks. Slowly add the sugar and beat just to a stiff meringue.
- Mix one-fourth of the egg whites into the yolks.
- Add the remaining egg whites, and do one quick fold into the yolk mixture. Add the sifted dry ingredients and the chocolate/nut mixture and continue gently folding until very few streaks of egg white remain.
- Take a large scoop of the batter and add to the bowl with the melted butter. Mix to combine, and add back to the large bowl of batter2. Fold together just to homogenous batter. Do not over fold
- Pour into cake pan (should be no more than ¾ full) and bake until the top feels firm and a cake tester is clean. Note: there may be some chocolate on the tester from the chopped chocolate. This is fine.
- Remove cake pan from oven and place on a cooling rack for 10 minutes. Place a cooling rack over the pan and invert. Place another rack over the bottom and gently flip again so the cake cools right-side up.
- Cake may be wrapped at this point and frozen for up to 3 weeks.
Prepping and crumb coating the cake:
- Place cake on a cardboard circle or a cake plate. If using 8” cardboard, trip away any overhand with kitchen scissors.
- Using a long serrated knife level the top of the cake and split in half.
- Lightly brush vanilla syrup over the bottom layer, then spread the apricot jam.
- Cover with the top half of the cake. Lightly brush syrup on top.
- Spread a thin layer of the ganache over the top and sides of the cake. It doesn’t have to look pretty at this point, you are just sealing the cake to make a smooth surface for the chocolate glaze.
- Let set in a cool place.
Chocolate glaze:
- Place the chocolate, butter, and corn syrup in a small heavy bottomed saucepan.
- Over very low heat, warm the mixture enough so the chocolate is mostly melted. Do not overheat.
- Remove from the heat and stir with heat-proof spatula or spoon until all the chocolate is totally melted. Stir with a whisk once or twice just until smooth. Do not whip air into the glaze.
- Let sit, gently stirring occasionally until 90°F to 92°F.
Finishing the cake:
- Place the cake on either a cooling rack over a clean work surface or a decorating turntable.
- Pour all the glaze over the top of the cake and with long metal spatula quickly spread the glaze over the entire cake, letting it fall over the sides. The less you work the glaze the shinier it will be.
- Use the glaze that has dripped off the cake to cover any bare spots.
- Lift the rack a half-inch off the surface and drop to help the glaze drip down the sides.
- Remove to a cooling rack to set.
- Place the melted white (or milk) chocolate in a small parchment paper cornet (cone). Snip off a small piece at the end
- Write the musical clef on the torte.
- Cake is served and stored at room temperature.
Notes:
1The easiest way to shave small pieces of chocolate is to run a knife down the edge of a large piece of chocolate, such as this Callebaut Amazon.com : Callebaut Finest Belgian Semisweet Chocolate Blocks – Approximately 1 pound per Block – 2 Blocks : Grocery & Gourmet Food or a block of semi-sweet from Trader Joes.
2 This extra step is done to better incorporate the melted butter into the batter. If the butter was poured directly into the batter, it would sink to the bottom requiring additional mixing and deflate the mixture.
