Chocotorta: Argentinian Chocolate Ripple Cake.

Recently, as part of the Culinary World Tour, I saw a post about an Argentine dessert called Chocotorta, over at We are Never Full. It looked so luscious I knew I'd end up trying to make it, and thanks to the upcoming birthday of one of my best friends, I did just that. The recipe called for thin rectangular chocolate biscuits. As far as I could tell, they are much like a chocolate Malt-O-Milk, or something along those lines. But I could not find anything like that at all. In fact, the only chocolate biscuit I could find were Chocolate Ripple Biscuits. And then it struck me how much like a Chocolate Ripple Cake this was.

For those of you who aren't Australian, a Chocolate Ripple cake is made by whipping some cream with sugar and vanilla, then making a log with the circular biscuits, sandwiching them with the cream, and covering the edges, once all the biscuits are down. Then it is left in the fridge overnight, and the moisture in the cream turns the biscuits into cake. This seemed to be much the same, only with fancier cream.

Chocotorta (my way)
2 pkts Chocolate Ripple biscuits
1 can of dulce de leche, or make your own from one can of sweetened condensed milk
1 block cream cheese
1 1/2 cup whipped cream

Line a square or rectangular pan with cling wrap, leaving about 8 inches extra on each side, and then place another sheet of cling wrap with the overhang the other way. You are going to use these extra “flaps” to wrap the Chocotorta up. (I didn't do this to start, attempting to build the cake straight on a plate, like you would for a chocolate ripple cake, but this cream isn't as sturdy, so save yourself the trouble, and start in the pan)

Beat the cheese and dulce de leche together with an electric mixer. I didn't have any ready made dulce, so mine was a little warm still, which made the whipping together a lot easier, but you should still be fine with room temperature ready made. Fold in the whipped cream until it is all mixed together.

Put a layer of biscuits in the bottom of the pan. You can tell from my final pictures that my bottom layer had the cream under the biscuits in parts, that's because I tried to do this step on a plate, and got all my biscuits coated before I gave up. It's up to you whether you want cream or biscuits first. Spread (or pour if it's hot in your kitchen, like ours) a layer of cream over your first layer of biscuits.

Miss Four pouring cream on biscuits

Then top the cream layer with another layer of biscuits, then cream, and so on, until you run out of biscuits or cream mixture. Make sure your final layer is biscuits. This is a great time to get your kids into the kitchen too!

Once you have placed your final layer of biscuits, fold the cling wrap across the top of the cake tightly. It won't hurt to squish it slightly, but not too tight, as you want to leave cream between each biscuit layer. Place in the fridge overnight, or for at least 5 hours.

Wrapped and ready to fridge

This was another entry for the 'no cook event' over at Seduce Your Tastebuds