Viva la Torta! Fudge Torte

The most recent baked confection was an experiment of sorts. Thanks to all of those who participated in the research phase and provided such helpful feedback. What brought it on was the want to give something to my vegetarian friend as thanks for volunteering to help us out another night at the TH. Maybe like bartering - this torte for five hours of your life. Anyway.

It contains (nearly) no animal product and also no flour. I'm not sure why I went the no-flour direction, but in any case, that's how it ended up. I think it was a good choice.

So the torte is mostly legume: bean curd and lentils. Chocolate was the next important thing, and cocoa powder, a little sugar, leavening and vanilla and salt [Salt is so important! Especially in chocolate things. And especially in hot cocoa with vanilla. You must add salt.]. It baked in a spring-form pan for nearly 70 minutes in a medium oven, and when it was done it had all these deep cracks and crevices... beautiful. I covered them all in ganache, though. We tried it the next day - dense and moist and fudgey. That's when I decided it must be a torte and not a cake. The most common negative comment was that the texture was a bit mealy, but no so much that you wanted to stop eating it. [As a note, the second trial I used black-eyed peas instead of lentils, but I think the lentils may have been better. I also added ground and chopped almonds to the batter, and while I like almonds I didn't like how the bits broke up the texture.]

So all in all, I think it was a success. Hooray for experiments.