Category: Pastry
Making Dobos Torte I: Layers
There’s a fussiness to Dobos torte layers that’s annoying to some, a delight to others. If you’re the type that enjoys a couple of hours alone in the kitchen, carefully applying batter to sheets of foil and baking and trimming each one to perfection, this job is for you. If not, well, may I suggest a nice pie this weekend?
READ ONAttention No-Knead Bread Lovers
My good friends Nancy Baggett over at Kitchen Lane just put up a terrific post on the subject. If you’ve ever tried no-knead breads — or are thinking of trying them — you won’t want to miss it!
READ ONTravelin’ Torte
Something few people realize about Dobos torte is that its debut didn’t just mark a milestone in the pastry arts, but a milestone in the product packaging arts as well. For Dobos was a canny fellow. He realized very early on, perhaps as earlier as the formulation stages of this cake, that there was money […]
READ ONCake Crust & Crumb
A good Dobos Torte question came in via email a few minutes ago from reader Nora, asking why I can’t just skip all the repetitive baking and simply slice two normal cake layers horizontally into, say, three pieces each. This of course is how a great many multi-layer cakes are made. The answer is simply […]
READ ONOn Doberge Cake
You can’t talk about Dobos torte without digressing for at least a short while to Doberge cake. Pronounced Doh-BARE-zh cake, it’s a specialty of New Orleans, and is thought by many to be an Americanized version of Dobos torte. In fact I recall once seeing Emeril Lagasse talk about it on TV. His claim was […]
READ ONDobos Torte Recipe
Of all the recipes I’ve found for Dobos Torte (and there are a lot of them out there), this one from Maida Heatter is the one that strikes me as the best blend of original intent and modern taste. For more rationale on that, see this week’s posts. For now suffice to say I think […]
READ ONHousekeeping
I’m trying to get my email troubles worked out next, but in the interim I’m still losing messages. I can think of several I’ve lost in recent weeks, including one about chocolate shavings and another about bagels in Louisville. If you’re one of those (or any others) please re-send or submit the question via the […]
READ ONWhere does Dobos Torte come from?
Dobos Torte is, very unsurprisingly, named after a fellow by the name of Jozsef Dobos, a pastry chef of no small repute in the Austrian Empire. Dobos unveiled his now-famous torte at the National General Exhibition of Budapest in 1885, and it shortly became an international sensation, said to have been enjoyed by Emperor Franz […]
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