Italian Chocolate Almond Torte

Blanching almonds: Soak almonds in hot water for 5 minutes or put them in boiling water for 3 minutes. Drain the water, this should loosen the skin, peel it off and let it dry for 2 hours.

Preparing the pan and oven: Preheat oven to 350 and prepare either a spring form pan (9″ or 7 “), I used 7” aluminum cake pan, lined with parchment paper and buttered it.

For the batter: Ground the blanched almonds to a coarse powder and keep aside. In the same food processor add chocolate chips, flour and cocoa and pulse for few minutes to break up the chocolate to tiny bits. Keep this aside. Now using a hand mixer, cream butter and sugar until fluffy. (2 minutes) Add vanilla extract and egg yolks one by one and beat for another 2 minutes. Now add the ground almond and chocolate mixer and combine using a spatula.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites with pinch of salt to a stiff peak stage. (3 minutes) Now add chopped pistachios nuts to the nut batter and fold the egg whites in it. (do not beat, just fold in to combine using a spatula) Pour the batter in the cake pan and bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick or knife inserted should come reasonably clean. Let cool on a wire rack and run a knife on the sides of the pan and gently remove the torte from the pan. Serve with chocolate syrup or dusted with powdered sugar.

Chocolate sauce: Had some milk chocolate morsels at home… added couple of teaspoons of milk and melted over a glass bowl placed over a sauce pan with boiling water.(Double boiler method) You can actually microwave for few seconds. Serve this immediately as it quickly thickens.