A Few days ago, while watching MasterChef (I do have my addictions) participants working on a Sachertorte, I got really infuriated. It seemed incredible to me that in such a cooking competition they did not know how to make a chocolate cake! ‘Cause that’s what a Sachertorte with its odd name is… simply a chocolate cake ... well of course, with extra ingredients.

By the way, that's another thing ... the ingredients. Can anyone explain to me where do I get cream in Havana? Or rather, where is apricot jam sold? I have never seen an apricot in my life like the majority of Cubans! And almonds... where?

Apparently these gentlemen have all their problems solved, they just gotta take a moment to visit the nearest shop. However, us Cubans, we have to invent (and often re-invent). The recipe is in grams for Christ sake! Who, in the vast extension of this Island owns a grams graduated scale? This people really have to understand it: when you address us, use cups, spoons, teaspoons. Don’t try to confuse us. Keep it simple.

A Sachertorte is a chocolate cake ... and I bring you my recipe to prove my point. I give you the original recipe in this link for those happy owners of a scale who can perform magic.

P.S. I do have a scale back home, graduated in ounces and pounds, I used my training in engineering and did the math to approximate the volumes. Don’t be scared.

Cuban Style Sachertorte

Ingredients:

• 2 cups fluor
• 1 cup icing sugar (if you don’t have any, you can get it by putting ¾ of a cup of white sugar in a blender)
• ¾ of a cup White sugar
• 100 gr butter (Careful, not to use margarine. That stuff in poison!!!) to get a 100 grams of butter check the weight declared in the label of the package. I get the 225 gr and cut a little less than by half.
• 6 eggs
• 150 gr of chocolate (You can take if from the chocolate bars sold in stores – the cheapest will do. I’m used to by 3 of this chocolate bars every time do this cake)
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking soda or baking powder.
• 1 pinch of salt

Stuffing:
Easy chocolate custard:

• 2 level tablespoons cornstarch
• 4 cups milk
• 1 egg
• 5 tablespoons chocolate
• 1 cup sugar

Cover:

• 150 grams of chocolate (the same chocolate bars I told you above)
• 1/3 cup condensed milk
• 30 g butter (see ingredients)

Preparation:
First thing to do is preheating the oven. Then put the butter in a large bowl. The butter must be at room temperature and look like an ointment. We beat it with some rods and mix well it with the icing sugar.

We make a foam with the egg whites and white sugar.

We melt the chocolate in a double boiler or in the microwave (a good choice is to use the defrost function) and add it to the butter, we mix both ingredients well, add the egg yolks one at a time, and continue mixing. After that, we add the salt, flour and baking fluor. Finally add the foam and mix gently.

Pour this mixture into a greased pan (I greased with butter) and bake about 40 minutes at medium heat, ideally at 170 ° C.

Once the Poundcake is in oven proceed to make chocolate custard. You just need to combine ingredients and make them simmer always stirring the mixture. It takes approximately 10 minutes to thicken.

After 40 mins remove and let cool. We divide it by half and put a layer of chocolate custard.

For the cover we melt more chocolate (again in the microwave or in a double boiler) and we add the condensed milk (it must be very hot). We cook the mix with the butter for a few minutes in low heat until all the ingredients melt. Then we pour them over the cake covering it entirely.

We keep it in the refrigerator for a while and we will remove it before serving.