Count von Count and his little sachertorte.“My little Sachertorte” is a term of endearment that I could’ve sworn Count von Count used for The Countess, but I haven’t been able to find any evidence to support such a claim. A Sachertorte is also a cake that originated in Austria in the 1800s, when Prince Wenzel von Metternich ordered a special dessert. Metternich’s chef was ill, though, and so a young apprentice named Franz Sacher took on the task and lo, the Sachertorte was born. It was a two-layer chocolate cake with a layer of apricot in the center and a coating of chocolate glaze, which sounds so delicious and yet didn’t really make any waves at Metternich’s dinner party.
Metternich, however, made lots of waves in his time,[ref]”The Diplomacy of Metternich“[/ref] as my in-laws informed me when I told them the story of the Sachertorte. I’ve been aware for some time that my in-laws are the type of people who know about the exploits of a 19th-century Austrian prince, but it’s still amusing when they bring such things up in conversation.
Anyway, Young Sacher eventually became Old Sacher. His eldest son opened a hotel, and that’s where the Sachertorte began to gain fame. People loved it then, and they love it now, and you can buy a 4.5-inch Sachertorte for only 21,90 €, which Google tells me is about $28. Or you could make your own, which is what I did last month when the Daring Bakers issued the challenge.
I need to work on improving my food photography.
I used Lidia Bastinich’s Sachertorte recipe, but I didn’t follow the instructions very carefully. Rather than putting the cake in the refrigerator to set after putting the apricot glaze on, I charged straight onward into applying the chocolate glaze. And so the cake slowly absorbed the chocolate glaze, so that when I revisited it awhile later it looked like I hadn’t glazed it at all. Naturally, I blamed Lidia Bastinich’s glaze rather than user error, so I made a batch of chocolate glaze from Kitchen Lane and reapplied it. That one set up nicely, and the double-glazing led to a pretty great taste and texture.
I don’t know enough about Metternich’s diplomatic efforts to form an opinion on them, but I do know that his chef’s apprentice created a rather tasty dessert.
Because I am on Pinterest and Pinterest loves an ooey-gooey pie, I have been aware for some time that something called “Crack Pie” exists. It’s served at Momofuku Milk Bar in NYC for $5.25 a slice or $44 for a whole pie. Forty-four dollars! That’s a lot of dough.
Cost aside, the last time I was in New York was something like 25 years ago, and I probably won’t be going back anytime soon. So I was intrigued to see that the much-heralded Crack Pie was one of the three options for this month’s Daring Bakers Challenge. The other two were a chocolate and caramel tart and a crostata, both of which sounded great but neither or which had “crack” in the name. And they also looked like the pastry/crust would be harder to make, and I’m kind of scared of pastry-making. So in retrospect I guess I didn’t exactly nail the “challenge” portion of this challenge, did I? I did make a creamy blueberry pie this month, but I bought the pastry for that. I also played a lot of Candy Crush Saga this month. So there’s that.
Anyway, back to the crack.
The Crack Pie recipe looks pretty long and involved, but it isn’t difficult at all. You start by making a giant oatmeal cookie, which you then crumble completely and turn into your crust. That’s the most involved part; after that, it’s just mixing a few things together and baking it.
It’s a very rich pie, so make sure you have a glass of milk on hand when you’re ready to try it. I’m not sure it really earns the “crack” rating — I haven’t had an overwhelming desire to make another one, and I’m pretty sure when they called it that they didn’t mean that the top of it might crack even though that’s what I told Poppy when she asked — but it is pretty tasty.
I became mildly obsessed with May’s Daring Bakers’ Challenge. It was a Swedish confection called the Prinsesstårta, so named because three young Swedish princesses were supposedly very fond of it. It’s composed of sponge cake, whipped cream, raspberry jam and marzipan, and the finished product is a green dome of quirky beauty.
It was somewhat delicious and completely confounding.
The sponge cake was the problem in my first effort. I’m apparently in good company with that, though; none other than Rose Levy Beranbaum has had difficulty with the genoise. I don’t think I spent enough time on the eggs, and the cake didn’t rise as much as I’d wanted it to. I tried very unsuccessfully to split the sponge cake into three layers. I ended up with two layers and a bunch of crumbs, but I forged forth anyway and made what soon became evident was not enough whipped cream to do the job.
Things were not looking promising. But did I throw the entire concoction into the trash can and call it a day? No I did not, because Rockford wouldn’t let me. So I forged forth again.
I couldn’t find marzipan anywhere around here, so I bought some almond paste and tried to make my own. It tasted pretty good and it rolled out easily, but the cake it was covering was so lumpy and sad that my finished product ended up looking like an alien brain.
Fig. DBK052013-A. The alien-brain Princess Cake.
It was ugly, but it was tasty enough that my father-in-law very subtly hinted that he’d like one for his birthday. So what did I do? I forged forth once more. This time I tried to be diligent about the eggs, but it didn’t help. The cake was flat just like its predecessor, which led me to believe it might — just might — be user error. Rather than accept a sad, flat cake again, though, I decided I’d just make another sponge cake. I used a recipe for a chocolate genoise just to shake things up a little, and between it and the other one I had plenty of layers. Then I made one million cups of stabilized whipped cream, and I constructed the cake and lo! It was glorious!
Fig. DBK052013-B. The WhippedCreamInator.
But then I made the new batch of marzipan, and it was terribly hard to work with and then it started to melt and melt and melt until it looked like the dish Lane Meyer’s mom made in “Better Off Dead”, and you know what? We ate it anyway. It didn’t have raisins, and it didn’t taste bad. I shared a piece with my Authentically Swedish Friend David and his family, and he confirmed my suspicion that it wasn’t an Authentically Swedish Cake:
The marzipan was obviously messed up. … I wasn’t crazy about the chocolate in the bottom layer, probably because there never was any in the ones I had growing up. Over all, I thought the flavor was there and it wasn’t too far from the Princess Cakes I had back in Sweden.
That’s a lot of dough.
I became mildly obsessed with May’s 
