Feeling uninspired! Yeah it’s been happening to me for quite some time now. Even exciting work assignments haven’t been able to rev me up. Life seems to be meh! When I look back through the pages of blog, I can’t seem to figure out, what I want to try next. Not sure, what I want. May be a peaceful travel journey, I’ve been longing for. Last time I traveled was to the mountains of Munsiyari in far north of India. It was an amazing trip, I had. But that was almost eight months ago. It’s a break probably, I have been longing for. Anyways leaving my rant behind, let’s talk about the cake.
I bake cakes quite often, and you would get to know going by the recipe index. But chocolate cake is something which I keep reserved for the times when my six year old niece demands for it. It is for her, you’d see those lovely chocolate cake recipes here on the blog.
She knows well when to demand for one. She’d call me up on Friday evening, whenever she wants to eat it on the weekend, I am visiting the family. I had this unopened bag of hazelnuts in my pantry from last Christmas shopping, which I hadn’t used.
And chocolate hazelnut cake it had to be of which the recipe was there in my bookmarks. It calls for dark chocolate, ground hazelnuts, eggs and butter. That means no flour, no gluten. Although, being gluten-free was not the reason behind choosing this recipe.
It just came out to be an added bonus. The crumb is super moist. It looks more sinful than it actually is! All you have to do is use the best quality dark chocolate. The darker, the better!
I iced the cake with a thin layer of chocolate ganache and topped it with some more chocolate curls and toasted hazelnuts, which is completely okay to skip out, if you want. The cake is that good already! All you need is good espresso shot for yourself to go along, and a scoop of vanilla ice cream for your kids.
Ingredients
Cake
200 gm dark chocolate, chopped
125 gm butter, chopped
6 eggs, separated
2/3 cup superfine sugar
1 1/2 cups hazelnut meal
Icing/Topping
100 gm dark chocolate, chopped
100 ml low fat cream
Chocolate curls
Toasted hazelnuts, chopped roughly
Directions
- Preheat the oven at 170 degree C. Grease and line a 8 inch springform cake pan with parchment paper and keep aside.
- For cake, melt the chocolate and butter together in a bowl, on a double boiler. Keep aside and let it cool.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together egg yolks and sugar, until pale and creamy.
- Beat in the hazelnut meal.
- In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form and they start to look glossy.
- Taking one third of the beaten egg whites into the chocolate and hazelnut mixture to make it lighter. Gently fold the remaining egg whites into the chocolate mixture, making sure not to deflate the batter.
- Pour the mixture into prepared pan and bake for about 50 minutes to 1 hour, until skewer inserted into the cake comes out with some crumbs attached to it. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes and then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely. Peel the parchment paper, once cooled completely.
- For icing, heat the cream in a saucepan, until it starts to boil. Add the chopped chocolate to the cream and let stand for 5 minutes, until chocolate has melted. Mix the chocolate gently and thoroughly into the cream.
- Pour the icing over the cooled cake and top with chocolate curls and toasted hazelnuts.