This is a recipe that has earned infamy as Tasty’s worst rated recipe ever, with reviews saying “Don’t waste your time and money”, “I can’t decide if I love it or hate it” and “Never try it”…so I did exactly the opposite and decided to try it out for you guys!
The Stonska Torta comes from the Croatian town of Ston. It’s a super sweet dessert that includes nuts, chocolate, lemon juice, a whole lot of sugar and…pasta?! The key is to use tube pasta like penne or ziti so that the nutty, chocolatey filling can get inside the tubes. And it’s perfect if you’ve got lots of yesterday’s leftover pasta – as long as you stored it without the tomato sauce of course!
I was definitely stepping out of my comfort zone when eating this one, and I can’t deny it’s got a blooming weird texture. I can’t quite get over the idea that I’m eating what’s essentially a pasta cake, but I think it actually turned out pretty darn good?!
So watch the video and let me know if you give it a try!
Croatian Stonska Torta Recipe
Put the eggs, olive oil and apple cider vinegar into a bowl and beat together.
Grab an unnecessarily big bowl, add the plain flour and salt (don’t forget if you’re too excited by trying the vinegar like me), then make well in the middle, pour in the egg mixture, and mix together. The flour will absorb your egg mixture quickly so it will become quite dry. Add tap water gradually as needed until the dough comes together. If it becomes too wet, add more flour. If it’s tacky like an 80s film, perfect.
Knead the dough for 2 minutes to smooth it up then let it rest while you prep your filling.
Whizz up your nuts, or buy them already ground. They might stay a little on the chunky side if you’re doing it at home, but if we’re going to do it ourselves, we’re going to add rusticness.
Next grate your baking chocolate – it didn’t say which so we’re using both milk and dark. You could get chocolate chips, but the recipe wants it grated which I guess helps to fill the gaps and holes in the pasta.
Now mix together the nuts, grated chocolate, sugar and cinnamon.
You’ll need precooked pasta for the next layer, and leftovers from yesterday are perfect for it. To make sure it doesn’t all stick together and to keep the tubular shape, cook it (yesterday10 al dente then spread it out on a baking tray, spritz with oil and store in the fridge until needed.
Mix the lemon juice, lemon zest, dark rum and olive oil together in a big bowl. Then add in the pasta and make sure the tubes are fully coated.
Finally in another bowl (yes, another!), whisk together the eggs and vanilla extract until smooth. This mixture will help to bind the whole thing together.
Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan/350F.
Lubricate a 10 inch springform tin with spray oil, then roll out your dough on a floured surface big enough to go up the sides but also fold over the top of the filling too. Try not to take it too thin so it doesn’t tear. Use a rolling pin to drape it into your tin, making sure to keep as much as an equal overhang on all sides as possible.
Sprinkle about a third of the nut mixture into the dough, followed by half of the pasta and another layer of the nut mixture. Dollop 4 tablespoons of softened butter on top of this, then repeat the pasta, nuts and butter to make another layer. Now pour the beaten egg mixture on the top of everything.
Fold the dough over the top (bodging any little tears together if you went overboard on the rolling or any shards of pasta go astray!). Cover the top with melted butter then bake in the preheated for 70 minutes when you’ll find out if it’s stonkin’ or stinkin’!
Remove from the springform tin then leave for 15 minutes to cool – although I left it for 2 hours which maybe helped to firm it up a bit. Flip the stonska then top with strawberries, raspberries and blueberries and sprinkle with icing sugar (which can cover up anything!).
Slice, serve and…enjoy?!