Daring Baker’s Challenge = quasifail

The August 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers’ cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

This challenge was a fail for me, with no fault to the hosts. I was a bit hesitant about this challenge, because it was going to be difficult to veganize. The cake layer calls for 6 eggs and I haven’t had much luck with vegan sponge cake. The toffee topping was another challenge altogether. I am the champion ruiner (an actual title in our home) of several things, and anything related to making stove top candy falls into that category.

Here goes…

I wanted to make a little cake, so rather than baking 6 individual layers, I made a large, thin sheet cake and cut out 6 5 inch circles.

My spongecake came out very not spongeworthy (haha!). Rather, it was dense and rubbery. Silken tofu was not my friend this round. Oops.

I made my own chocolate buttercream, as the one called for used eggs. The top wedges were supposed to be dipped in a beautiful amber colored toffee that would rapidly harden. I was all prepared with my oiled offset spatula and parchment… and it failed. Light colored, wouldn’t harden. And this isn’t the first time I’ve run into this. Here is my question: could it be organic sugar? Back before we were veg (which also coincides with before we cared about what we put in our bodies), I never had problems caramelizing regular crap sugar. What could it be?

For what it’s worth, here are the pictures.

The whole minicake, topped with not-amber not-hardening sticky wedges.

And inside shot of all of the layers. Well, it kind of looks like it’s supposed to… kind of. Better luck next month!