The August 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers’ cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

This is a very late submission for the Daring Bakers Dobos Torta. I made my attempt last month and failed miserably. I didn’t want to look at the September challenge until I finished August so here is my Dobos Torta: late, incomplete, check minus.

I can say that I learned a lot making this cake and without my stand mixer have slightly stronger arms to show for it.

You may have seen this fancy looking cake in little pastry shops. The Dobos Torta was created in the late 1800s by a confectioner of the same name (József C. Dobos) and presented to King of Hungary at a national exhibition. What made this delicate cake stand out was the use of chocolate buttercream, a rarity at the time, along with a caramel topping and nut garnish.

In my lifetime, I’ve made about three cakes from scratch. This one involved no cake pan and very little flour. In fact the major ingredient in this cake is eggs, nearly an entire carton, and requires a great deal of whipping (hence the aforementioned arm strength). So during my first attempt when I forgot to add a good portion of the eggs it totally screwed everything up. Along with that I experienced the difficulty of spreading thin layers of batter onto parchment and cooking each one for about five minutes. If it’s undercooked, everything sticks, overcooked and the whole thing flakes apart. It’s a difficult cake to make and it was only about half way through my “do-over” that I understood how the layers were supposed to look and feel.

So on Dobos Torta Part Deux I messed up some layers coming in with four layers instead of six. Then it was time for the chocolate buttercream, again a first-time for me, but surprisingly easy. Thankful for some local Ghiradelli chocolate for that. Then came the caramel…

How hard can caramel be? Sugar, water, boil? No. There is an art to caramel making and I have yet to attain it. I burned mine badly. It smelled and looked burned, but I thought that I should taste it anyway. Here’s a tip: don’t stick molten burned caramel in your mouth. After it burns your tongue and instantly solidifies to your teeth you’re required to pinch the rubbery chunks off your gums. At least that is what happened to me. So no caramel went on the cake and I put another layer of yummy buttercream on top.

Garnished (salvaged?) with some macadamia nuts it was enough to get compliments from the roommates. And despite all my complaints about how much I screwed up the cake was good. I probably won’t be making any more attempts with this cake, but I was daring enough to try twice.

Check out how the cake is really supposed to look and imagine my frowns at this picture of my first cake.