Chocolate Pecan Torte

As promised, my first food post is the torte I mentioned. This recipe was given to me by my grandmother when she found out that I had no use for my food processor. Funnily enough, after I bought everything to make the torte, I got out said food processor and discovered that at some point in the 4 years I have owned it and never used it, I lost the bowl attachment! So I improvised and used my blender. First food lesson? Blenders are not good substitutes for food processors.


Chocolate Pecan Torte
1 cup nuts
4 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
5 eggs
1/2 cup flour

You can use any kind of nuts for this recipe; I chose pecans because the grocery store I went to only had pecans, walnuts, and almonds, and pecans sounded the tastiest. Plus I planned on taking this to my boyfriend's mother, and she has a walnut allergy.

I've never had a torte before. The closest I have come is drooling at the Sacher Torte that they serve at La Madeleine. So I was pretty surprised to look at the recipe and see only half a cup of flour, but wikipedia informed me that a torte uses ground nuts in substitute of flour.

After preheating the oven to 325 degrees and lining a spring form pan with parchment and butter, I started out by putting the chocolate and the pecans in the blender and ground them into a fine paste. So far so good.

The next step of adding the sugar and butter was a little tricky. My poor little blender, try as it might, could not handle all that thickness! So I turned to my trusty KitchenAid mixer and hoped for the best. A whisk attachment is not really a substitute for blades, so everything didn't get ground up like I'm sure it was supposed to.


I added the eggs one at a time, then followed with the flour. When I scraped the batter into the pan, it didn't look smooth at all:

After half an hour in the oven it looked pretty good, and smelled amazing! Bob the Fish approved.



I made whipped cream to go with it, and took it over to Matt's parent's house yesterday, and it was a hit! Matt's mom liked it so much she asked me to make it for her birthday cake. I forgot to take my camera with me, but I took this one with my iPhone.


People liked it? Sounds like success to me! But I think I'll get my hands on an actual food processor before I make that birthday cake.