Hazelnut Cake
Hazelnut Cake
Adapted from https://knitreadclick.wordpress.com/tag/cake/
Cake
- 8 oz. butter, softened
- 7 oz. sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 4 eggs
- ½ cup flour
- 4 teaspoons baking powder
- Pinch of salt
- 9 oz. Bob’s Red Mill Finely Ground Hazelnut Meal/Flour
- ¼ cup heavy whipping cream
- ¼ cup 2% milk
Ganache
- 1 cup heavy whipping cream
- 5 oz chocolate
Preheat oven to 350F.
Cake
Cream together the butter and sugar. Stir in the vanilla extract. Beat in eggs until the mixture is fluffy.
Fold in the flour, baking powder, and salt.
Combine the heavy whipping cream and 2% milk in a cup. Stir the hazelnuts and milk into the egg mixture in alternating additions beginning and ending with the hazelnuts.
Pour the batter into a lightly greased 8” x 8” or 9” x 9” pan. Bake the cake for approximately 50 minutes or until golden brown.
Cool the cake before preparing the ganache.
Ganache
Heat the heavy whipping cream in a small pot. Add the chocolate and mix until the chocolate is melted and thoroughly combined with the cream. Add more chocolate if you want to achieve a thicker consistency.
Place the cake on a cooling rack. Place a sheet of wax paper on a sheet pan or jelly roll pan and then place the cake and the cooling rack over it. (This makes clean-up a lot easier.)Pour the warm ganache all over the cake and try to cover the sides as well. Cool completely before serving.
8" top diameter x 6.5" bottom diameter
This pan was just large enough for the cake.
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Notes
The first time I tried hazelnut cake was when I purchased a slice from Esther’s German Bakery at a farmers’ market. The cake was moist, a little dense yet crumbly, and barely sweet. Judging by images online of hazelnut cakes this recipe most resembled the crumb of the cake I had tried from the bakery.
Unfortunately the person who posted the original recipe I was looking at forgot to mention how much flour needed to be added to the cake batter. My guess was ½ a cup; I was worried that ½ of cup of flour would be too much for the cake but decided to err on the side of over-estimating the quantity needed rather than not adding enough flour. If the cake did not turn out well it would be easier to use less flour the next time. I was very pleased with the crumb of the cake though so I will stick with using ½ a cup of flour!
I only lightly greased the baking pan I was using, but I should have placed a square of parchment paper at the bottom of the pan as well. The cake did not stick very much to the sides of the pan, but it was quite stuck to the bottom as you can see in the images above. I think if I had also waited ten minutes longer to let the cake cool in the pan before flipping it out the cake would have remained intact.
The original recipe calls for about 12 oz of chocolate and one cup of heavy cream. I thought this ratio of chocolate to cream would be too high and I did not want a layer of ganache that was too thick. I started off with one cup of heavy cream and 5 oz. of chocolate chips. My ganache was much too thin and I kept adding more chocolate until its consistency was thicker. I poured the ganache over the cake and it coated the cake well, but twenty minutes later I could see the cake through the ganache. My ganache was too thin and I should have cooled it a little longer before pouring it over the cake. I only had 48% cacao chocolate chips when I was making this but I think a 60% cacao chocolate would contrast better with the cake.
The 14 oz. bag of hazelnut flour I bought was $14.99 at Whole Foods. The hazelnut flour is lovely and its texture is perfect, but since 9 oz. of flour is required per cake I don’t know if I will be baking this cake very often.
