Guest Post #3: Chocolate Amaretti Torte

Hi everyone, I am hitting the books and trying to pass the last exams of year 11. Can you believe there will only be one more year of school left then? I am SO stoked
Anyway, a couple of months back, I asked for your guest posts during this period and I was lucky enough to get a huge response – thank you all so much!
I promise you will not miss me, in fact, you will groan when I come back, becase I have so many wonderful guestposts lined up for you all! I hope you discover some wonderful new bloggers who tantalise your tastebuds like they do mine! Enjoy mes amis!
Should you need to contact me, I am more than at service through my email: gobakeyourself@yahoo.com.au or just leave a message on my facebook page: Go Bake Yourself

Also a significant note, I lost over 60-70 followers through some freak wordpress issue so please, if you were one of them and you have recently visited again, resubscribe – thank you!
Now I leave you to it…

**************************************************************************
I may be getting a little ahead of myself with this guest post but I think you will all appreciate the change and use of alcohol in baking
This lady is sophisticated, caring and someone I see who appreciates every little wonder and beauty in life. Is it not apt that her blog’s name is mybeautifulthings?
She is truly a gem in the kitchen, and in knitting, and in sightseeing – ok so multi-talented
Introducing to you all a very close blogging buddy of mine, the wonderful Sally!

Take it away my friend and I know everyone will enjoy!

***************************************************************************
I am so thrilled to be doing this Guest Post for Choc Chip Uru! My name is Sally and I have a blog  mybeautfulthings  in which I write about three things each day which please me in some way – people, food, art, nature, words, music and anything that makes me smile and I hope will make my readers smile too.

I love cooking for friends and family – it is one of the ways I show them I love them – and I’m told I started baking at 2 years old with scones! I learned the art of cooking from my Mum who was way ahead of her time, making risotto, pasta dishes  and curries in the 1950′s. All my friends were on ‘meat and two veg.’  She took great pride in serving up something different for each day of the long summer holidays and I continued to do this for my four.  My Dad was the marmalade maker and he taught me that skill which I put to use every February. He also made the bread for the family. They were my inspiration.

Mum and I catered my wedding completely and I have since gone on to make a couple of wedding cakes for family. I have an enormous cookery book collection including hand-written recipes from my Mum and my Grannies and I cannot resist new recipes from blogs, magazines and internet searches. My list of ‘to cook soon’ gets longer and longer!
When I started my blog, I knew food would be in there somewhere but as I began posting photos of our meals as some of my beautiful things, people began asking me for the recipes and so I have a Recipes page with fifteen recipes so far and many more to share! They range through simple suppers to gorgeous puds.

I’ve been following Choc Chip since I started blogging about 10 months ago and so admire her blog, her inventiveness with food, and her story tellling so when she invited Guest Bloggers to help her out over her exam period, I was over the moon!

I’ve chosen something chocolatey (of course!), a family favourite that we have for all family celebrations the most recent of which was last July when three generations of us had a week together. The last time we were all together was in 1993 and then, of course, our children had not had children!

So, this is a special dessert for special people and that is why I’ve chosen it for Choc Chip Uru too!

Chocolate Amaretti Torte
**We first got this from Delia Smith who had been given it by Derek Fuller. We’ve made several small changes over the years

Ingredients

• 475g good dark chocolate
• 5 tbsps brandy
• 140g liquid glucose
• 600mls double cream
• 100g Amaretti biscuits
• a flan dish or shallow cake tin 27 cms across (We like this dessert wide and shallow. You could certainly use a smaller tin and have the whole thing deeper as Delia Smith suggests, a 23cm tin))
• some cling film or parchment to line the dish with.

Method

1. Line your dish with cling film or parchment. If your tin has straight sides you can just line the base
   

   Dish lined with cling film

2. Put the biscuits into a strong plastic bag and crush them lightly with a rolling pin. You can leave some of them a bit bigger to add to the texture.  Cover the base of the dish with the biscuit crumbs
   

   Cover the base with crushed crumbs

3. Put a bowl over just simmering water and add the chocolate, broken into pieces
   

   Melting the chocolate over a pan of just simmering water

4. When it is just melted, add the glucose syrup and the brandy and stir until blended and glossy
   

   Brandy and glucose syrup added ready to blend

   

   All blended

5. Leave the chocolate mixture to cool down. You need it just warm
6. While it does so, whip the cream. I was always taught, that to whip successfully remember the following “Cold cream, warm whites” For this recipe that does not apply! You need to have the cream at room temperature
   
   

   Whip the cream carefully until it very slightly thickens

7. Fold 1/3 of the cream into the chocolate mixture
   

   One third of the cream ready to be folded into the blended chocolate, brandy and glucose syrup

   

   Folding the cream in very carefully

8. Now fold that mixture into the rest of the cream – It’s almost impossible not to taste at this point! Please do! It’s delicious!
   

   Adding the chocolate blend to the cream

   

   Almost blended

9. When it is all smoothly blended pour it over the crumbs
   

   Pouring the mixture onto the crushed Amaretti biscuit base

10. Spread out the mixture evenly. Cover with cling film and chill overnight or freeze
    

    Torte ready to cover and freeze

11. When it comes to serving, just upend it onto your chosen dish and peel off the cling film. If you used a straight sided tin and lined only the base, run a knife around the side and upend it as before. It is a well-behaved dessert and will allow you to do this!
12. Dust the top with sieved cocoa powder, over a template if you like as we did here
    

    Turned out and decorated with a dusting of cocoa

13. Serve with some chilled pouring cream. It won’t last long!

I just want to say thank you again to Choc Chip Uru for the privilege of doing this guest post and to hope that her exams are going well. As an ex-teacher I had another motive for Guest posting: I wanted CCU to have the time to study and to do well! Good Luck and we look forward to your posts again when they are all over.

***************************************************************************

You learn something new everyday – Sally taught me to be ahead of your time and that I cannot live without trying this torte
It was fabulous to have you guest post my friend and I know that this torte blew quite a few minds! Thank you so much!

Want to see more of the beautiful life? Check out Sally’s blog today… now

About these ads