Chocolate Walnut Torte

A torte is a cake that uses little or no flour, instead using ground nuts or breadcrumbs.  Its origins are in Europe (“torte” is German for “cake” or “tart”) where the tortes can be very rich and often come as a layered cake filled with jam and cream.  In order to save our waistlines and our arteries, I usually just sprinkle my torte with a little icing sugar!

The cake itself tends to be more dense than a cake made with flour since it contains no baking powder and usually shrinks back as it cools.

In my post for Oat and Walnut Slice, I talk about the health benefits I have noticed after adding walnuts to my diet earlier in the year.  I was still thinking of these when I came up with this recipe!

Ingredients:

• 4 eggs
• ⅔ cup sugar
• 1½ cups ground walnuts
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• ¼ cup cocoa

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 180ºC.  Line a 20cm square baking tin with baking paper.

Beat together the eggs and sugar until thick and pale.

Mix in the ground walnuts, essence and cocoa.  I find the ground walnuts tend to sink to the bottom of the mixture – this does not adversely affect the baked product.  The raw mixture is quite runny and small bubbles appear on the surface.

Bake for 30 minutes.  Test with a skewer before removing from the oven.  The torte shrinks back from the edges of the tin and sinks in a little as it cools.

This gives the torte its almost fudgy texture.

If desired, for serving, the outer pieces can be trimmed to remove the misshapen edges.