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Central Europe · Volume 38, The Pepper That Came Late, the Herdsman's Pot and the Coffeehouse

Dobos torta

Budapest, 1885

Dobos torta, six thin sponges layered with chocolate buttercream under a hard caramel top cut into wedges: a round layered cake on a stand showing six thin pale sponge layers with dark chocolate buttercream between, its top a glossy amber caramel cut into twelve wedges propped at an angle.

Illustration

Time
3 hours

Presented at the national exhibition of 1885 as a cake that would keep without refrigeration, published in 1895, a hungarikum in 2019. The sponge and the cream are Csapó and Éliás's Dobos of 2010, reached through a search summary and not the page, so the sponge's sugar is unconfirmed; the caramel top is Tóth Ferenc's 1906 note as Magyar Nemzet printed it. The nuts for the sides have no source, so it stays an outline.

As tradition built it

Serves 12. About 3 hours.

Ingredients

The tradition's method, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them.

  • 6 eggs, for the sponges
  • 100g icing sugar, for the sponges
  • 100g plain flour, for the sponges
  • 235g butter, for the cream
  • 200g dark chocolate, for the cream
  • 4 eggs, for the cream
  • 200g icing sugar, for the cream
  • 100g sugar, for the caramel top
  • ground hazelnuts or walnuts, for the sides

Method

  1. Bake six thin round sponges of eggs, sugar and flour, of equal size.
  2. Make a chocolate buttercream of butter, chocolate, eggs and sugar, and spread it between five of the layers.
  3. Melt sugar to a clear amber caramel, pour it over the sixth sponge, and cut that layer into wedges with an oiled knife before the caramel hardens.
  4. Lay the wedges on top, propped at an angle, and press the ground hazelnuts or walnuts round the sides. Keep it cold.

What a modern chef changes

The cake Dobos meant, with a thermometer

Rung 4

Method

  1. Bake the sponges on marked parchment to the same 24 centimetre circle, 7 minutes each at 200 degrees.
  2. Take the caramel to 165 degrees, pale amber; darker is bitter against the chocolate.
  3. Make the cream with a cooked egg base, pâte à bombe, so it keeps the way the cake was built to keep.
  4. Cut the top layer into twelve before the caramel sets, and count to thirty while you do it.
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