Home › Pantry Parking › Rye Bread Date Torte
Rye Bread Date Torte
3 eggs, separated 1 cup sugar 1 cup chopped dates 1/2 cup chopped walnuts 1 cup dry rye bread crumbs 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon vanilla Beat egg whites very stiff, add well beaten egg yolks. Then add bread crumbs and all other ingredients. Bake at 375 degrees for 25 minutes. Top with whipped cream.
Chili 1 lb. beef, cut in cubes 2 tablespoons shortening 1 green pepper 1 onion, chopped 1/2 cup tomato salt and pepper 1/2 teaspoon paprika 1 cup kidney beans Brown the meat in the hot shortening, add the pepper and onion and fry golden brown. Add tomato, seasoning and water and cook until meat is tender. Cook beans separately. Combine meat and beans and bring to the boiling point. Carry in waxed or glass containers.
A crumb torte of the kind that turns stale bread into dessert, leavened almost entirely by stiff egg whites. It needs no flour and no butter.
- Pan and yieldThe original names no pan. An 8- or 9-inch square or round pan, greased and lined, suits this quantity; it bakes into a shallow torte rather than a tall cake. Serves 6 to 8.
- The crumbsDry rye bread crumbs means bread dried out hard and ground fine, not fresh soft crumbs and not the coarse seasoned crumbs sold for coating. Sourdough or light rye both work; heavily seeded pumpernickel will dominate the dates.
- Folding orderThe instruction reads oddly: the beaten whites appear to serve as the base, with the yolks and then the dry ingredients folded into them. Add the yolks, then the dry mix, in a few gentle strokes. Beating at this stage collapses the whites, which do most of the lifting here alongside the teaspoon of baking powder.
- SugarA cup of sugar with only three eggs is a lot. Beat about half of it into the whites as a meringue and stir the rest in with the crumbs, so the whites hold structure.
- DatesChop them with a little of the crumb mixture or a dusting of the sugar to keep the pieces separate; otherwise they clump into a single mass at the bottom.
- Oven and doneness375F for 25 minutes is accurate for a shallow pan. The torte is done when the top springs back and the center is just set; it will sink slightly as it cools, which is normal for a crumb torte.
- ServingCool completely in the pan before cutting, or it tears. Whipped cream should go on at the table, not in advance.
Crumb tortes belong to a Central and Eastern European tradition in which dry bread was never thrown away, and the German and Jewish bakers who carried that habit to America produced variants such as Brottorte, matzo tortes and zwieback tortes. Rye is the distinguishing note here, giving a faintly sour, almost malty background to the dates and walnuts. The chili that follows this recipe ends with instructions to carry it in waxed or glass containers, a reminder of the era before plastic when a picnic or a lunch pail meant a screw-top jar.