chocolate hazelnut torte

Supermarket checkout line. bob spots a food magazine special supplement entitled Healthy Cooking with a cover recipe of an inviting dense chocolate slab dripping with an overflowing chocolate sauce topping and hazelnuts in the name: chocolate hazelnut mousse torte. A chocoholic with a weakness for his favorite dessert nut, and it's healthy too? How could bob resist?

So the recipe was in the mental to do docket. All that was needed was an excuse. Which ani provided. Restless to bake something one evening, the first idea that comes to her mind lacks essential ingredients. So bob suggests this one. Some ingredients are also missing, but nothing that can't be faked without doing damage. After getting started together, bob realizes that chocolate was not what she had in mind and has to finish solo. Poor spousal communication typical of males.

No applesauce left for the fat substitution. It doesn't last forever, and we'd finally cleared that out from supplies. But a jar of carrot baby food turned up waiting for the next brownie cheesecake torte (it had been waiting quite a few years already) that turned out to be exactly the required half cup. And only a few double chocolate chips left, but lots of high quality bittersweet chocolate to substitute them, roughly broken up in a guesstimate amount that was a bit hard to compare with the original 8oz units. But the exact amount is not critical here. And the extra chocolate sauce topping? Who needs it. A dusting of confectioner's sugar will do the job, improving the health stats a bit more and saving more work. And what does this have to do with mousse? We know mousse, and there was no mousse here.

ingredients

crust

1/2 c recipe ready chopped hazelnuts (or the equivalent)

2 c chocolate wafers

4 T melted butter

nonfat cooking spray for coating the pan

chocolate mixture

1 c lowfat milk (we use 1% but the nutritional analysis allowed for 2%)

1 3/4 c sugar

3 T coffee liqueur, like Kahlua (we were out! and used Godiva Cappuccino liqueur)

1/4 c vegetable oil

8oz chocolate chips (or equivalent solid chocolate)

flour mixture

1 1/2 c flour

1/4 c cocoa powder

1/2 t salt

1/2 t baking powder

cake finishers

2 large eggs

1/2 c applesauce or 1 jar carrot baby food

2 t vanilla

topping

sprinkle confectioner's sugar over each piece at serving time, using one of those little covered cans with holes in the top if you have one

instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350° F.
2. Blend or food process together the nuts and roughly broken up cookies. Then combine with the melted butter in a bowl and press evenly into the bottom (only) of an 8 or 9 in diameter spring-form pan coated with cooking spray (we used a 9 in pan to spread this baby out a bit more, smaller pieces, better health). Set aside.
3. Combine the chocolate mixture ingredients in a saucepan and melt them together on low heat, then stir one last time and set aside to cool.
4. Sift together the flour mixture ingredients in a large bowl and set aside.
5. When the chocolate mixture is cool, whisk in the egg, applesauce or carrot baby food, and vanilla and then stir in the flour mixture until smooth.
6. Pour into the crust filled pan and bake for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick jabbed into the center comes out with a few moist crumbs attached? [We baked this an hour and the center was still mush.]
7. Remove and cook in the pan for 1 hour or refrigerate overnight.
8. To serve, remove the side from the pan and sprinkle each serving with the optional confectioner's sugar and serve with a complimenting ice cream flavor on the side, which of course blows up the nutritional data if you are not careful.

notes

1. The nutritional information includes the chocolate glaze resulting from whisking together 1 c sugar, 1 c cocoa, 1 1/4 c 1 % milk and 2 t vanilla over high heat until boiling then cooking on medium heat for 3 minutes—oops, remove from heat and then add the vanilla, sift through a strainer?—then cool in the fridge with the surface covered by plastic wrap until slapping on the cooled cake, a possible option:
   14 servings, per serving: 373 cals, 5g prot, 55g carbo, 2g fiber, 17 g fat, 7g sat fat, 187mg sodium, 40mg cholest.
2. Healthy Cooking, December 2002, cover recipe, p. 57.
3. We'll have to replenish our Kahlua supply soon. And browsing the Godiva site reveals a motherload of killer recipes. Life is too short.
4. Apart from a quarter wedge sacrificed to the in-laws (small pieces remember?), bob got to do this one piece by piece until it disappeared. With Ben and Jerry Karamel Sutra ice cream on the side. Yumm.