Caprese Cake recipe | Torta Caprese

Caprese Cake (Torta Caprese) is a typical dessert of the Neapolitan tradition. In the original recipe, the main ingredients are: dark chocolate and almonds. This is my special recipe. For those who love dark chocolate strong taste.

Caprese Cake is gluten-free

Caprese Cake has a low thickness, it’s crispy on the surface but soft and slightly moist inside.

Try this recipe and taste this special italian chocolate cake with strawberries, vanilla ice cream or whipped cream, according to taste or the season.

Do you like ALMOND PASTRIES recipes? Then read  how to make almond cookies

or Torta Caprese with white chocolate and lemon

Caprese Cake recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Slowly melt the butter and chocolate in a double boiler (1). Separate the yolks from the whites, beat the egg yolks with sugar (2). Whip the egg whites up (3).

Allow to cool the chocolate with previously melted butter (4). Add minced almonds and milk to the beaten egg yolks (5). Stir very well and add chocolate (6) (7). 

Finally add whipped egg whites and stir slowly (8). Pour the mixture into a low, wide baking pan, with waxed baking paper on it(9).

Level the mixture and bake it into the oven at 180° (350 F) for about 40 minutes (10). Let cool and sprinkle with icing sugar. Serve with strawberries (11), vanilla ice cream or whipped cream according to taste or season.

Origins and history of Torta Caprese

Caprese Cake (Torta Caprese) was born in the early twentieth century in Capri Island, south Italy.

In 1920, in a small pastry shop in the Island of Capri, a chef, whose name was Carmine di Fiore, unintentionally created this luscious Neapolitan masterpiece: torta caprese.

It is said that the chef was alone in his small culinary “kingdom”, surrounded by his tools and ingredients and that he was committed with extreme care in the preparation of an almond cake for three mobsters come to Capri from United States to buy a batch of Al Capone‘s spats.

Everything was going for the best but, maybe for a distraction, maybe for the rush to finish or maybe for the agitation, he made a mistake that would cost him dearly his reputation as aclaimed chef: he forgot to add the required flour dose to complete the cake mixture. So he baked the cake without realizing it and, when cooked, with astonishment, the cake turned out a real delicacy: soft in the center and crunchy outside. The three Americans were 100% satisfied, even to ask for the recipe. Chef Carmine di Fiore continued to prepare the Caprese Cake even later and it liked a lot. It was a great success!