--- Season 3 of airs Tuesdays at 8pm on SBS Food, or stream it free via SBS on Demand ---
There’s a luscious, chocolate almond cake that’s celebrated by Italians from Naples for one accidental reason: its creation was a mistake.
Torta Caprese, one of Italy’s most delicious desserts, is also regarded as ‘one of history's most fortunate mistakes’ (‘uno dei pasticci più fortunati della storia’).
As the story goes, the traditional torta from the island of Capri was first made by accident in the 1920s when a baker forgot to add flour to an almond cake. The result was a soft, flourless cake with a rich, chocolate flavour. A similar but much more controversial take on that story is that a woman on the Island of Capri accidentally baked the cake for gangsters. She got so nervous when cooking a cake for the criminals that she forgot to add the flour.
Of course, no one knows if that story is actually true. Another competing account attributes the invention of the cake to Neapolitan chefs who were asked by the King of Naples' Austrian wife to make a (an Austrian chocolate cake). They didn’t end up making a dessert as per her request. Instead, they improvised by using almonds.
It has a rich and dense texture that will fill any devout chocoholic hearts with joy.
Whatever the actual origins of the cake, one truth stands strong today: Italians are grateful for its invention, intentional or accidental.
Cook and host of the SBS series , Silvia Colloca, celebrates the ‘mistake cake’ with her own version of the flourless recipe. She makes torta Caprese - a naturally gluten-free cake - in episode nine of the third series.
“Torta Caprese is one of the easiest chocolate cakes in the world to make,” says Colloca as she makes the cake for viewers. “It’s easy to see why it’s one of the most loved [cakes] in all of Italy. It has a rich and dense texture that will fill any devout chocoholic hearts with joy.”
How to master torta Caprese
Colloca’s recipe for torta Caprese is like most others. It features a lot of egg: six yolks and four whites separated to be exact.
Let’s not forget the inclusion of dark chocolate. While many recipes call for chocolate to be melted with butter, Colloca sticks to a traditional Italian alternative: olive oil.
“There’s no butter in this cake. If you think that the combination of dark chocolate and olive oil is a bit foreign to you, I just urge you to give it a go because it is one of those combinations that once you try it’s just going to surprise you in the most positive way.”
Of course the other essential element in the recipe for this torta is almond meal (AKA- the flour replacement).
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Torta Caprese
Co-owner and head chef at Sydney’s, Nicole Bampton, tells SBS that she’s been making torta Caprese for many years, since she was a young apprentice. More recently, she's made the cake from Capri for the restaurant’s regional dinners to celebrate the food of Naples.
In her cheffing experience, she explains, the fineness of the almond meal is linked to the final quality of the cake. The better quality of the almond meal, the better the end result.
“You can make the almond meal yourself by blending almonds very finely,” Brampton says. “But if you don’t have a really good food processor, the almonds won’t grind down really fine.
“In that case, you should buy almond meal already ground – that would be much better. Also, if you don't know what you're doing when you're blending the almonds, you can actually overdo it. You may overwork the almonds, bring out the fats and turn the almond meal into puree or almond butter.”
Bampton also suggests that other nut meals can be used interchangeably with almond meal. “You can substitute almond meal with hazelnut meal if you like. The torta will still be traditional and turn out really well.”
Size matters - cake tin size that is
Another cooking tip to amp up your torta Caprese game is to pay attention to the size of cake tin you use during baking.
“I’m using a small cake tin because the only rising agent in this cake is the eggs,” Colloca says. “There’s no baking powder as such, which means that it will only grow so much.
“If you use a large cake tin it will be quite flat, which is not really a problem. But if you want like a thicker slice you might want to contain the batter within the walls of a smaller cake tin.”
After baking the cake, the torta should taste moist, delightful and decadent. Serve it with berries on the side and make sure you’ve left plenty of room for dessert.
“Let me tell you – this is not a light cake,” she says. “This is as rich and indulgent as it looks. It’s a sometimes cake but sometimes this is the cake we need: a signature cake from the island of Capri.”
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