Late! Daring Bakers' August Challenge - Dobos Torte

The August 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

I did this at the start of the month, and as such completely forgot about it when it was time to post. ^_^;

So, Dobos Torte.

It wasn't too difficult to make, really, but it did require a little time and busyness. Making the pancakey cake layers went like so:
Start with two trays in the oven with layers baking on them.
Then take some more mixture and spread another layer onto a paper circle.
Swap it with the most cooked layer in the oven - Put it back in on the top shelf, moving the other cake to the shelf below.
Rinse and repeat until the mixture is gone.
Peel the paper off all of the layers, breaking a few in the process.
Shrug and start to build the cake.

Never done a cake like this before, hehe.

Now, assemblage!


(Ah, that was fun! The kitchen was disgracefully messy (not my kitchen though!), badly lit (well, it was dusk) and I was balancing the camera awkwardly on an empty juice carton... but still, doing such things delights me. :P)

Did some basic sugar-butter-chocolate buttercream. Slopped the stuff on haphazardly. Tried to make it neat. Realised I hadn't trimmed the layers at all.

It was very slippery. Maybe I didn't let the cake cool completely or maybe it was just a runnier buttercream, but it did seem to want to slide somewhat.

But hey.

Caramel layer time!

I cut up a cake layer, put it on a greased tray, poured over the caramel-stuff. Left it overnight and had terrible trouble getting the pieces off the tray! at least they bent rather than snapped, eh? The good thing about caramel, I find, is that it always manages to look kinda pretty.


No pictures of the fully assembled cake, and maybe that's not such a bad thing, because overall it was rather... ugly. Oh, I do envy everyone else's beautifully presented cakes sometimes. I need to put some effort towards that really. :P

Here's the half-decorated Dobos:


VERDICT: Alright.

Nice cake, but I don't think it's really my *thing*. The cake was light and delicate in taste and texture. The caramel layer was... odd. There was something about the caramel layer that seemed weird and gave it what I can only describe as a 'clinical' taste. My guess it was the bottled lemon juice I used. However, it was a bit chewy too, which isn't a bad thing in itself, but it made it rather difficult to eat. We would end up with a great lump of the stuff left on our plates.

Good challenge, but wouldn't do again.