Recipe: Chocolate Blackout Torte

[shadowspar]

Obscenely rich, completely vegan. An excellent way to get tofu into those who profess to loathe it. We had a family friend proclaiming how horrid tofu was as he was working his way through his third slice of this.

(This is a very slightly tuned-up version of a recipe in the Rebar Cookbook. Said cookbook is Full of Good and Wonderful Things, and I will not stop plugging it until everyone has a copy. =)

Crust:

• 3 tbsp sugar
• 1 cup spelt flour (or unbleached white flour)
• ⅓ cup toasted cashews (or substitute whole-wheat flour)
• ⅛ tsp salt (omittable)
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• ¼ tsp powdered ginger
• ¼ cup vegetable shortening
• 3 tbsp vegetable oil
• ½ tsp vanilla

Filling:

• 1 tsp vanilla
• ¾ cup sugar
• 2½ boxes extra-firm silken tofu
• 1lb dark chocolate
• ⅛ tsp salt (omittable)
• 2 tsp espresso powder (optional)

Crust:

Preheat oven to 350℉. Grease an 8" springform pan.

Place sugar, flour, cashews, salt, cinnamon & ginger in a food processor. Whiz until finely ground. Add shortening; process until well blended. Turn out into a bowl; add oil & vanilla. Mix well. Press the mixture into the bottom of the springform pan. Bake for 15 minutes; set aside & let cool.

Filling:

Drain the tofu; purée in a food processor until smooth. Add sugar, vanilla & salt; mix well. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. Fold the melted chocolate into the tofu mixture & mix thoroughly.

Pour the filling over the baked crust. Bake for 35min or until firm. Cool completely on a wire rack. Refrigerate overnight before serving. Omnomnom.

Comments

[shadowspar]

It's a "filling" in the same sense that a cheesecake has a filling.

When you make the crust, you can do one of two things. You can form it about halfway up the sides of the springform as well as across the bottom, giving you a kind of concave "shell" that you can fill with the tofu mix (whence "filling"). Or, you can press it all into the bottom of the pan, giving you a torte with a crust on the bottom but not up the sides. In this case, yeah, the tofu "filling" is more like a thick layer than a filling per se.

Of these two, I usually do the former, but the result should be extremely tasty in either case. =)