Níngxià Gǒuqǐ Raspberry Cacao Fusion Torte

Somewhat unconsciously, I opted for Asian Sweet wheat free Invasion as my creation for this month's Sugar High Friday, hosted by La Petite Boulangette.

For a work colleague's birthday, I ventured into the world of goji berries as my "Asian" twist on chocolate torte. She requested something chocolate with raspberries, I added the gojis. I toyed with the idea of calling this Gaspberry (goji + raspberry) Cacao Torte but decided the Pinyin was more fun.

Not really planning to double the recipe, I realized I needed to bake for 18 folks so I freaked out and threw just about every nut we had in the house into a coffee grinder to fulfill the nut requirement in this passover chocolate torte recipe.

The torte included four types of chocolate blended together. The featured chocolates were a blend with embedded raspberries from Trader Joe's (with something like 60% cacao) and a bar of Vosages goji berry chocolate with pink Himalayan salt, slightly disappointing in that they only offer the bar at 41% cacao (milk chocolate). I'm a gal who really can't abide by much less than 60% as a minimum. To get the darker, richer tones of chocolate, I added some some 73% Dagoba, an ounce or so of Scharffen Berger 99% unsweetened and reduced the sugar by about 1/3. For the almonds, I blended both ground almonds and pine nuts together.

I also ventured out to the Temescal Farmer's Market hoping for pastured eggs. I found an affordable dozen ($4) from Glaum Egg Ranch, though they weren't technically pastured. Here's more information about goji berries, which I would put serious bucks on their rise as the next new "high antioxidant fruit in fashion."

The real slam dunk for this post is- I didn't really know what a goji berry was save for this video spoof on inappropriate yoga instructors...so that's where this recipe began! I especially love the video because every time I play it, my husband winces and sighs ~ loudly ~ in hopes I'll turn it off! What bothers him most is just how much he wants to whup Ogden upside the head, over and over. Nice to know that men get bothered by this stuff now and again!