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.

Chocolate Hazelnut Cake

Sinmi

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

  

• 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*

Instructions

 

• 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.
• In a bowl or mixer bowl, combine the all purpose flour, hazelnut flour, cocoa powder, sugar, salt.
• Add butter into the dry ingredients and slowly begin to cream. You want to mix until a consistent crumb-like texture forms.
• 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.
• Take the prepared baking pan out of the fridge/freezer. Pour in the chocolate hazelnut cake batter. Place in oven
• Bake at 325F for about 55 to 60 minute until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
• 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.

Keyword cake, chocolate, chocolate hazelnut, dark chocolate, Hazelnut, pound cake