Local eating isn’t only about fresh fruits and vegetables. Cakes can use local ingredients too!

Encouraged by a cake baking class I took recently, I decided to try my hand at making a sacher torte. This rich, chocolatey cake traditionally has a filling of apricot jam. I’m pretty sure apricots don’t grow anywhere in northern New England, but raspberries certainly do. Seeing as I have plenty of homemade raspberry jam on hand, I decided to use that for the filling.

Here’s the cake before I sliced it into two layers:

Here’s the bottom layer with the raspberry filling:

Ready for eating:

I used the recipe in my 1976 edition of the Joy of Cooking. The result wasn’t as dense and rich as I remember sacher torte being, but was still quite good and, most important of all, very chocolatey. I look forward to more baking practice as I hone my cake-making skills. Watch this space!

Local analysis:

local–eggs, butter

semi-local–jam (local – raspberries, nonlocal – sugar)

nonlocal–sugar, flour, chocolate, coffee (in the frosting)