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Torta Caprese is a dark chocolate cake made without any flour. This specialty of the Italian island of Capri consists of dark chocolate, eggs, sugar, almonds, and butter. It is characterized by its dense chocolate texture and a layer of powdered sugar on top.
The cake is often garnished with halved strawberries or raspberries, while the restaurant versions are often served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side. Although the origins of torta Caprese are quite murky, many believe that it was invented by mistake, when a cook left out the flour from a recipe.
MOST ICONIC Torta Caprese
Ferrara's pastry chefs created torta tenerina in the early 1900s to honor Elena Petrovich, the queen of Montenegro and the wife of the Italian King Vittorio Emanuele III. The name of this Italian classic translates to tender cake, and with only five ingredients - chocolate, butter, eggs, sugar, and cornstarch, this flourless dessert truly lives up to its name.
Torta tenerina has a light, meringue-like crust that holds its rich, yet incredibly light and tender chocolate heart. This traditional treat is found in almost every patisserie in Ferrara, but it is also equally popular throughout the country.
MOST ICONIC Torta Tenerina
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Torta Savoia is a layered chocolate cake that hails from Sicily. It consists of several sponge layers coated in a rich chocolate hazelnut cream. The entire combination is covered with a glossy chocolate glaze, and in some variations, sponges are lightly soaked with rum.
It is said that the cake was created when Sicily was merged with the Kingdom of Italy in 1861. The legend says that the Benedictine nuns from Catania thought of the recipe and included hazelnuts from Piedmont to honor the House of Savoy—hence the cake's name.
Named after Salome's dance to make Herod crazy with lust, torta setteveli (cake of the seven veils) unsurprisingly achieves more or less the same results. This traditional Sicilian birthday cake consists of an alternating combination of chocolate and hazelnut layers.
From bottom to top: chocolate sponge, praline crunch, hazelnut Bavarian cream, chocolate sponge, hazelnut Bavarian cream, chocolate mousse, and finally, a layer of chocolate glaze on top. It is still unclear who had created this delicious cake, so some credit Capello of Pasticceria Capello in Palermo, while others claim that Luca Mannori from Prato made it first (and won the 1997 Pastry World Cup in France).
MOST ICONIC Torta Setteveli
View moreThis flavorful Italian cake has a rich almond and cocoa flavor characterized by an intense aftertaste of rum and coffee. It was invented in 1907 by Eugenio Gollini who dedicated it to Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola, a famous 16th-century architect. The recipe for the cake is still kept a secret and is only known to the heirs of the Gollini bakery.
Traditionally, the cake is consumed for breakfast with coffee or tea on the side, while the rich flavors make torta Barozzi the perfect complement to various custards or vanilla ice cream.
MOST ICONIC Torta Barozzi
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Royal is a classic French dessert that is also known as trianon. The base of the cake is made from dacquoise—the crispy almond meringue that's topped with crunchy praline cream, usually consisting of melted chocolate, thin and crispy crêpe dentelle biscuits, and praline paste.
The cake is then topped with a thick layer of chocolate mousse. Finally, it can be dusted with cocoa or coated in a chocolate glaze. Not much is known about the origin of gâteau royal, but the dessert is found in many French pastry shops. The cake comes in a round or rectangular form.
The decadent, chocolate-laden Torta Novecento (cake nine hundred), was created by a renowned Canavese master pastry chef Ottavio Bertinotti to celebrate the turn of the 20th century – hence the name. This seemingly simple cake, consisting of a mousse-like chocolate filling sandwiched between two layers of cocoa-flavored sponge cake, eventually became so popular that Bertinotti, tired of countless knockoffs being passed off as the real thing, finally patented the secret recipe for Novecento in 1964.
In 1972, he sold the recipe rights to Umberto Balla, founder and owner of Pasticceria Balla. His family-run pastry shop has been making the famous Torta 900 ever since, thus establishing itself as a culinary landmark of Ivrea.
MOST ICONIC Torta 900
Torta Pistocchi is a rich Italian chocolate cake with a velvety, fondant-like texture. The original recipe was created in 1990 by Claudio Pistocchi, and the original ingredients only include dark chocolate, unsweetened cocoa powder, and heavy cream.
As a result, the cake is creamy, dense, and very moist. The creator of this cake says that it should be accompanied by almond cookies, whipped cream, and spicy caramelized pears.
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Pampepato or panpepato di Terni, also known as diamante delle terre di San Valentino is a traditional cake originating from the province of Terni and the neighboring municipalities in the province of Perugia. The cake is made with a combination of chocolate, raisins, nuts, cocoa powder, candied fruit, coffee, spices, honey, and flour.
It's usually prepared during the festive Christmas season. Pampepato di Terni is dome-shaped and dark brown in color, with nuts visible on the surface. The texture is soft, compact, and crunchy, while the aromas are that of chocolate, nuts, and spices such as pepper, nutmeg, and cinnamon.
Torta Osimhen is a decadent chocolate cake created in honor of Napoli (football club) striker Viktor Osimhen. In a city that lives and dies for good food and its football team, pastry chefs Salvatore and Giuseppe Mellone of the Neapolitan pasticceria Fresco Forno decided to celebrate the spectacular Nigerian player by conceiving a special cake made of three layers of chocolate sponge and two layers of chocolate mousse mixed with salted caramel.
The cake is glazed with dark chocolate and sprinkled with crushed cookies, meant to represent the footballer's recognizable hair. Torta Osimhen is completed with an edible decorative wafer "mask", an iconic part of Osimhen's playing gear. Soon after it was introduced, torta Osimhen became a huge hit, not only among Napoli fans but with local and foreign cake connoisseurs (Viktor Osimhen himself tried this delicious dessert and gave it his approval), prompting other Neapolitan pasticcerias to make their own version of the original.
MOST ICONIC Torta Osimhen
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