IT

The Passover Torte, or "The Dessert", or "IT" was always a major part of the holiday for me growing up. A friend of the family (Carol Delton, respect) made it every year, and it was the sort of thing everyone always looked forward to. Three whopping layers of meringue, chocolate, whipped cream, and nuts that would inevitably fall apart when someone tried to cut slices from it, and always tasted incredible. For years I entertained the thought of giving it a shot, and so I finally did.

I failed.

The original recipe is as follows:

PASSOVER TORTE aka “THE DESSERT,” aka “IT,” as in “Are you making IT?” “I love IT!” “I look forward to IT every year!”
(recipe as transmitted by Freda Delton, z’l, 1932-1998; Carol Delton’s comments below; read the whole thing through and meditate on it before you attempt IT!)

1 ½ cups egg whites (approx 10 large eggs)
½ tsp salt
2 ½ cups sugar, divided (too much, reduce)
3 cups whipping cream
2 cups slivered almonds, toasted
8 squares, 1 oz each) semi-sweet chocolate (or 8 oz chips)

Beat egg whites with salt until they stand in peaks.
Add 1 ½ cups sugar gradually and continue beating until stiff.
Trace three 9 inch circles on brown paper (or parchment paper), placed on baking sheets.
Fill in the circles by spreading beaten egg whites.
Bake at 250 degrees for 2 ½ hours. Cool.

Melt 7 squares of chocolate and spread on cooled layers.
Let stand until chocolate is firm.Beat cream until thickened. Continue beating and add remaining sugar gradually.
Gently fold in almonds. Frost top of layers with cream.
Shave one square of chocolate and sprinkle over top. Place in freezer
Cuts best when frozen.

But I ran into a few snags, myself. As has already been shown by Simon and my little adventure a few posts prior, beating egg whites properly is really difficult. On Monday I went through a whole ten eggs (and good eggs too) that never even got to the stiff point they were supposed too, they simply jumped right ahead to goop. I was not happy. So with the NEXT ten eggs I was incredibly careful, and I found a tip online about putting in a few drops of lemon juice (or anything acidic) to help hold them together.

This worked quite well and I got some perfect egg whites out of it. Unfortunately, I wasn't used to quite so many as ten, and so when I was pouring them from the mixing bowl I discovered that there was a whole third of egg whites at the bottom that were still liquid. Oops. So I ended up with only two layers of meringue instead of three... not the end of the world at a small seder.


But, as you can see, the meringues didn't quite come out right either. Here the one on the right is at least kind of whole, but once I tried to separate it from its paper it came entirely into pieces. I would have freaked out, except that I was overjoyed that they even tasted and felt like meringue. It's all about the small victories. So, once I had a big plate of meringue pieces I figured... what the fuck, let's dump chocolate on them anyway. After all, Carol had given me the great advice that the secret to making it come out good is to not worry how it'll look.


By the way, I melted the chocolate chips in a wide bowl that sat nicely on top of a pot of boiling water, using the steam's heat. Every now and then I'd pour a little water into the bowl to keep the chocolate from clumping too much.

Anyway, at this point I put it into the freezer to solidify the chocolate, Peter whipped the hell out of some whipping cream, and I mixed in the sugar and almonds, and spread it all on top. Since what was supposed to be three layers was really only one this left us with an abundance of sweetened, almond-filled whipped cream... no one complained. The whole thing went in the freezer for the rest of the day, and when it came out, I'll be damned if it didn't taste great. It sure as hell didn't come out like it was supposed to, but it was all held together pretty well and it was enough for six people to all have at least two slices. Good times.