Chocolate Hazelnut Cake

Sometime last year, I started a relationship with a new nut. I have known hazelnuts for a while. But in the last year, our relationship deepened. And now, I am blending hazelnuts into flour in my newish food processor. Then I am making this recipe for Chocolate Hazelnut cake with mascarpone cheese frosting and fresh berries. Yes, that relationship escalated. But this chocolate hazelnut cake is such a thing of beauty.

Chocolate Hazelnut Cake Recipe

In my apartment, there are a few things I make sure I have on hand. All-purpose flour, milk, eggs, butter, and sugar top the list of must-have. These things are my essential tools of stress relieve and procrastination. Some days I ask myself if I love baking cakes more than I love eating them. I must say, that baking cakes almost edges out eating cakes.

Lately, all I think about is cooking or baking. I have become really obsessed with new combinations and recipe testing. This chocolate hazelnut cake is a product of playtime in the kitchen. It reminds of everything that felt luxurious to me as a child in Nigeria. The chocolate hazelnut in a gold foil-wrapped piece of Ferrero Rocher. The silkiness of the Nutella spread. It is everything I always wanted to eat as a child in a form that my adult serve deserves.

For this recipe, I decided to try a reverse creaming method when making the cake.

Instead of creaming the sugar and butter first, I started with the sugar and flour then added in the butter. It created a similar texture to the standard creaming method. If you are curious about the different methods of creaming cake batter, might I suggest this post by the Cake Blog.

Also, I will be posting the recipe for the mascarpone cheese frosting as a separate post. It allows for better organizing of the different recipes on this blog so that it can be easily found. The berries used on the cake is a combination of thinly sliced strawberries and whole raspberries.

Sinmi

Chocolate Hazelnut Cake

A decadent chocolate cake with the nutty flavor of hazelnut flour.

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Prep Time 25 minutes mins

Cook Time 1 hour hr

Resting time 1 hour hr

Course: Dessert

Ingredients Method Notes

Ingredients

  

• 2 Sticks Butter
• 1 Cup Sugar
• 11/4 Cup All-Purpose Flour
• 1/2 Cup Hazelnut Flour
• 1/4 Cup Cocoa Powder
• 4 Eggs
• 2 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 2 tbsp Buttermilk*
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 2 tbsp Butter For prepping the baking pan*

Method

 

1. Preheat oven to 325F. Also, prep a 9inch baking pan with butter. Also, I like to coat my baking pan with flour after using butter. Then place the pan in the fridge to cool.
2. In a bowl or mixer bowl, combine the all purpose flour, hazelnut flour, cocoa powder, sugar, salt.
3. Add butter into the dry ingredients and slowly begin to cream. You want to mix until a consistent crumb-like texture forms.
4. Add in the eggs with the vanilla and buttermilk. Slowly drizzle into the mixing bowl while mixing. Be careful not to the over-mix batter. Mix until the batter just barely comes together.
5. Take the prepared baking pan out of the fridge/freezer. Pour in the chocolate hazelnut cake batter. Place in oven
6. Bake at 325F for about 55 to 60 minute until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
7. Allow the cake to cool down for about 15-20 minutes before removing from baking pan. Let it cool down another 45 minutes before cutting. If decorating, allow it to further cool down completely before frosting**.

Notes

*You can use milk as well if that is what you have on hand.

**Recipe for mascarpone frosting can be found here.