The cake didn’t rise in my first two attempts at making a Sachertorte. It tasted fine, but it was dense like a brownie.

Since I started receiving the translations, I have come to realize that the recipes in the Castle Cook’s notebook are more like cook’s shorthand than full blown recipes. For instance, here’s the translation for the recipe I tried this weekend:

Sachertorte
250 g butter
200 g sugar
8 eggs
200 g softened chocolate
1 spoon lemon juice
1 spoon vanilla sugar
120 g flour
Stir for 15 minutes. […] the foam of 6 eggs under, bake for 1 hour, chocolate filling over, whipped cream as well.

With just bare bones to start from, there is a lot of room for interpretation. Some parts are easy. It’s easy to convert metric measurement to U.S. equivalents. I also know that eggs were smaller in the 1920’s, so I can reduce the amount of eggs. From experience and by looking at similar recipes, I can make a decent guess at cooking instructions and even know what the finished product should look like.

The tricky part comes when there are ingredients that don’t seem to fit. In this case, lemon juice and vanilla sugar. I took a guess that they were unique flavorings, so I mixed them in the batter before I folded in the beaten egg whites. Wrong! My cake didn’t rise. I even tried it again, just to make sure I hadn’t made some baking faux pas. Same disappointing result. Both cakes were stunted and dense, which is great if you are trying to make brownies, but discouraging if you were hoping to end up with a cake. Back to the internet for a little research.

I found this site called Baking 911. It’s full of baking techniques and baking science. A little like Myth Busters for baking. What I discovered is that the lemon juice and vanilla sugar should have been added while beating the egg whites. Sugar helps stablize beaten egg whites and an acid, like lemon juice, helps prevent overbeating. I guess it’s back to the kitchen for me…