Baking for Beginners: Sachertorte

I'm a true baking geek and have been dying to try making a Sachertorte ever since the final of the Great British Bakeoff. The recipe is legendary and has been fought over by rival Austrian bakeries for 200 years. It's really just a chocolate cake though. The method is slightly fiddly, but don't be scared, it's really not that hard (apart from the piping, which is optional).

I used Claire Clark's cake recipe with my old faithful chocolate ganache glaze.

Excuse the terrible photo, a last minute battery emergency meant I had to take this on the iphone. It doesn't look this poo-like in real life, honest!

Sachertorte (serves at least 8)

You'll need:
For the cake

• 125g unsalted butter
• 125g caster sugar
• 6 eggs, separated
• 125g dark chocolate, melted
• 125g plain flour, sieved
• Pinch of salt
• Jar of apricot jam

For the ganache

• 150g whipping cream
• 150g dark chocolate, broken into pieces

Make it!

• Grease and line an 8 inch round tin. Preheat the oven to 180c / Gas 4.
• Cream together the butter and roughly 2/3 of the sugar.
• Gradually beat in the egg yolks one at a time.
• Stir in the melted chocolate
• Stir in the flour.
• In a separate (and very clean) bowl whisk the egg whites with the rest of the sugar and salt until it forms stiff peaks.
• Gently fold the egg whites into the chocolate mixture, taking care not to mix it more than necessary but making sure there are no streaks of white.
• Spoon it into the tin and smooth the top. Bake for 45 minutes to an hour, until a cocktail stick poked into the middle comes out clean.
• Leave the cake to cool on a rack.
• Once cool, boil up a couple of spoonfuls of apricot jam.
• Slice the cake horizontally. Brush some apricot jam over the bottom half, then sandwich the two halves together and brush all over with apricot jam.
• Make the ganache by bringing the cream to the boil and pouring it over the chocolate pieces. Stir together until the chocolate has all melted and a shiny sauce has formed.
• Coat the outside of the cake in ganache and leave to set. If you're feeling fancy, pipe "Sacher" on the top with some left over ganache.