Torta de Cielo / Almond Sponge Cake

Ashley was down with stomach flu yesterday and even though the fever and vomiting has gone away, she’s still having some mild diarrhea. And I have to say she’s quite a champion, she isn’t fussy or cranky except when she had vomiting spells but she’s still pretty active for a toddler that needs to go to the toilet every 15 minutes or so. So this morning, she woke up and said to me groggily ‘Mommy, Ashley make cake’ and even though I told her she’s still sick and she can’t eat cake, she insists that we make (bake) cake today, so since I was interested in making the cake after coming across it on one of my many cookbooks the other day plus I have the ingredients in my pantry, why not

 

Now during the process of baking the cake, I’ve broken a few baking rules and pretty much landed myself in a baking jail (if there’s such thing) because, while waiting for the cake to bake, I googled for Torta de Cielo recipes and to my surprise (and horror) I need to soak the almonds for at least 6 hours and instead of 40minutes as stated on the book, I need to bake for at least an hour. So many discrepancies between the online recipes and the book! And you would be wondering what are the rules that I’ve broken, well I tried to adjust the oven’s temperature to 160 Celsius instead of 180 Celsius and 25 minutes instead of 40. At first it looked alright, even though the cake didn’t rise, I tested the cake doness after 10 minutes, it was still soggy wet! So I increased to 190 and because I was so afraid the cake would burn and I lowered it to 170 after 5 minutes. I kept on increasing and lowering the temperature so often I was beginning to anticipate the arrival of the baking police. So in the end it took me close to an hour just to make this cake. And I suspect that I didn’t use an 8 inch pan as instructed, I used 6 inch pan perhaps that’s why the cake didn’t cook according to the time and raised pretty high.

 

And since I have never eaten this cake before I can’t compare with mine. It has the texture of a banana cake and the crust’s a little chewy but still very nice although I might reduce the amount of sugar next time because it’s too sweet for my liking.

 

But overall, the cake does smell and taste oh so heavenly; no wonder it’s called Heaven Cake in Spanish

 

And I’ve decided to rate the food I’ve made so you can have a clearer picture of it. I promise I won’t be biased!

 

Taste                            : 3/5 because of the sweetness

Preparation                   : 4/5 the recipe’s pretty easy to follow

Ingredients                    : 5/5 you can get the ingredients at hypermarkets, supermarkets

Availability                      & baking supplies stores

Cooking time                : 2/5 taking too much of my time supervising the cake

 

(adapted from Perfect Mexican)

 

You need:

225 gm of unsalted butter, at room temperature plus extra for greasing *

175 gm of whole almonds, in their skins

225 gm of caster sugar

3 eggs, lightly beaten

1 tsp of almond essence

1 tsp of vanilla essence

9 tbsps of flour

pinch of salt

 

to decorate:

icing sugar for dusting

slivered almonds, toasted

 

How to:

1. Lightly grease a 20cm/8inch round pan or square cake pan and line the pan with baking parchment
2. Place the almonds in a food processor and process to form a ‘mealy’ mixture. Set aside *view picture*
3. Beat the butter and sugar together with a mixer at medium speed until smooth and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, almonds and both the almond and vanilla essences with low speed until well blended
4. Stir in the flour and salt and mix briefly, until the flour is just incorporated.
5. Pour or spoon the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the surface. Bake in a preaheated oven at 180 Celsius, for 40-50 minutes, or until the cake feels spongy when gently pressed.
6. Remove from the oven and let stand on a wire rack to cool. To serve, dust with icing sugar and decorate with toasted slivered almonds.

Enjoy!

Cooking Tutorials
Ingredients

 

 

 

How to

*Mealy mixture*

 

My lil sous chef blowing a kiss for luck

For behind the scenes, do hop over to my personal blog