I love the name "Sybil," a name I first heard in high school, when I was learning about the ancient Greeks. This
Sybil was a weird prophetess, whose hair stood on end and whose breasts deflated when she was about to prophesy. That would make you pay attention, wouldn't it? Nowadays, people are more likely to think of the
Joanne Woodward movie about the woman with 13 or so different personalities. The Sylbil of the pecan torte is Rose's "honorary cousin," and, I'm guessing, she is neither a prophet nor a person who suffers from dissociative identity disorder. She makes a nice cake, though.
It's always a good feeling to find the cake you're making on the Quick-and-Easy list, although that doesn't guarantee you won't have a problem. My problem here was getting the cake out of the pan. Although this pecan torte is easy enough to put together, I would take some points off the quick-and-easy scale because I found it a little difficult to work with. I'll see whether anyone else had this experience. If it was just me, I'll give the points back.
I toasted the pecans yesterday, so today all I had to do was process them with some sugar.
The most tedious part of the recipe is dividing seven eggs. I almost always break the yolk in at least one egg, so I have to first put the white in a small bowl to make sure it's untainted by the yolk before I add it to the mixing bowl.
When I was baking Christmas cookies this year, my friend Joanne astounded me by separating eggs in what I considered an extremely daredevilish way, by letting the whites just drop into the mixing bowl. I almost screamed in horror. "Joanne, what are you doing? If you break one egg yolk, you'll ruin the whole thing!" She gave me a puzzled look. "I never have," she said. I guess she's just a dainty egg-cracker.
The yolks are mixed for about five minutes, until they look like softened, whipped butter.
Then the whites are beaten until they look like beaten egg whites. Then everything is mixed together, and that's pretty much it.
My cake came out of the oven a little taller than the sides of the springform pan. I confess that I didn't weigh the eggs today, so I probably had a greater volume of egg whites than I should have. I'll also confess that, although I love to weigh other ingredients, I feel that an egg should be an egg, and there should be no more measuring involved.
Instead of immediately inverting the cake, as the recipe instructs, I had to leave it rightside up until it sank enough to turn it over. When it was time to take it out of the pan, I accidentally cut some of the edge away from the cake while I was using a knife to loosen the sides. Also, removing the parchment from the bottom was tricky, and I almost lost the cake during that process.
I let it sit while I made hot cross buns. I liked my ecumenical mix of Passover cake and Easter buns.
When the cake was completely cool, I made the coffee whipped cream. This was my first stab at stabilized whipped cream, with a little gelatin added, and there was nothing to it. The cream didn't turn gummy or lumpy, but it didn't weep either. Spreading it on top of the cake was a breeze; plus it covered up the hole where the instant-read theremometer had been.
It's nice to have this cake in reserve, should you ever be called upon to make a cake for Passover. It's not a cake that makes you feel like you're giving up something (i.e., flour); you're a long way from sacrificing flavor. The flavors are simple, yet intense; the textures are rich, yet light. It's a good cake for any holiday, or for no holiday, or no occasion, at all.
TASTING PANEL:Doug: "This cake is a winner."
Jan: "It's a great dessert if you've already overeaten. It seems so nice and light."
Mary: "Way better than the lamb cakes my family used to serve at Easter."
Laurel: "Nice and light--but it has butter in it, doesn't it?"
Jim: "I like the flavors of the cake, and especially like the coffee flavor of the whipped cream. But it still seems too grainy to me."
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