Sachertorte [Recipes]

2007 Mar 11
Here is a recipe for my famous German Sachertorte. It's a chocolate/almond cake frosted with melted semi-sweet chocolate. So it's a hard-shell frosting. I usually serve it at our annual dessert party around christmas time.

This is a family recipe out of a small bakery in Mannheim, Germany. A former landlord of mine is of that family.

125g butter
125g sugar
125g-175g semi-sweet chocolate (batter)
150g-250g semi-sweet chocolate (frosting)
80g-100g ground almonds
125g-150g flour
6 eggs
250g (or more) apricot marmelade
2-3 teaspoons backing powder

(sorry if the following sounds awkward but it's translated from german and I don't know some of the proper baking terms in english)

Separate your eggs.

Beat the butter til it's fluffy, add the sugar, then egg yolks. Melt the chocolate for the batter (double boiler or waterbath) and add to the batter. Now add the ground almonds.

Beat the egg whites til they are stiff and fluffy (like shaving cream) and put on top the batter (but don't mix in yet). Add the flour and baking powder and carefully fold it all in so as to not knock too much "fluff" out of the egg whites.

Grease a 9" or 10" springform pan. Bake 350F for 45 minutes. It's done when a knife can be stuck in and removed with nothing on it. Allow to cool and remove from form. Cut the cake in half so there is a top half and bottom half. Spread the apricot marmelade onto the bottom half, then put the top back on. Melt the chocolate for the frosting with 50g to 70g butter and spread it over the whole cake. Put in fridge to cool.

When cutting, immerse the knife into very hot water before each cut, so as to cut through the hard chocolate frosting.

The only finicky part is getting the right butter/chocolate ratio for the frosting. You want enough butter to allow you to spread it well before it sets up, but not too much so it won't set up. If you are comfortable melting the chocolate on direct low heat on the stove you can probably get away without butter since the chocolate gets a fair bit hotter and spreads really well. If you end up with too much better then put it in the fridge after frosted, and store there.

2007 Mar 11
You can also make it in smaller springform cans as shown here. Bake about 10 to 15 minutes less when doing it this way. As I recall this time around I filled up the 3 small 4" pans and then put the rest into a 6" or 7" or something like that.

I don't mention in the recipe above, but before the frosting hardens you arrange whole almonds on top to delineate how many pieces you intend to cut from it.

In the winter time, instead of the fridge I've been known to let these set up by opening the BBQ on the back porch and closing it down over the. They set up really quickly when it's -20C out :-)

Obviously, when serving you peel off the wax paper (actually I think it's parchment in these photos) from the bottom and put them onto an appropriately-sized plate. You can pre-cut for a finger-food party, which is what I use the small ones for cut into 4 pieces.

2013 Dec 24
Sigh. Has it really been this long since I've made this?

2013 Dec 29
Funny, I was just thinking about this last night. And peanut butter balls!

2018 Aug 15
Would almond flour work in place of ground almonds? The flour is very fine but its great for making dense baked goods... how fine of a grind are we talking for this recipe?

It looks delightful!

2018 Aug 16
Same thing AFAIK (yes it works fine)

Nov 27
Sniff