Sachertorte - Dad's 60th birthday take 2

So this year my Dad decided to be greedy and have two birthdays. Admittedly it's not every year you turn 60 and it's quite a milestone so really he was entitled to it! Anyway, for his actual birthday I made the fruit cake and we celebrated with my other half and his family, and he decided he wanted a family celebration too for my brother, my brother's girlfriend and my uncle. Plus it was a good excuse for a holiday!

I was asked if I could make a cake and I'm definitely not one to turn down an excuse to bake! I had the perfect cake as well: a Sachertorte. I fell in love with this cake when I lived in Austria and have made it many times since. The recipe is one my family there got from a magazine years ago - the original Sachertorte recipe is top secret. However, this recipe is the best I've ever tasted.

Sachertorte is a chocolate cake with apricot glaze through the middle and under the glaze, and the glaze is a bitter chocolate icing. It is the perfect chocolate cake in my opinion: not at all sweet, very chocolatey and a very balanced flavour. The cake is not too heavy, but at the same time it's dense enough that every bite of cake contains a lot of flavour. It uses plain flour and no baking powder; instead it is the eggs which cause it to rise (it uses six and the whites are whisked separately to make snow)

I have to admit to using ready-made Sachertorte glaze, bought in Austria, rather than making my own. It's so good that I haven't dared try making my own, although now that my supply has run out, I might have to start doing so soon however as I haven't got any trips to Vienna in the pipeline at the moment! The only bit I wasn't very happy with was the writing - I used a white chocolate icing pen and if you leave it for any amount of time, it seeps and widens - it does not hold its shape at all. Next time I'll try making royal icing and piping it on.

This is my favouritest chocolate cake in the world! It disappeared very quickly (my brother would have licked the cake plate clean if I had allowed him to!) and my Dad enjoyed his second 60th birthday!