Baking Session!

I took leave on Friday to bring Larissa for her photo shoot session with Amanda! The session is only at 5pm so I decided to pop over to Michele's place to have a practice baking session to test out the recipe for Larissa's birthday cake. 

I decided on a Nutella Chocolate Cake which I got from Nigella Lawson's Recipes. 

Here is the recipe:

For the cake: 

6 large eggs, separated

Pinch of Salt

125g soft unsalted butter

400g Nutella

1 tablespoon Frangelico, rum or water

100g ground hazelnuts

100g dark chocolate, melted

23cm Springform tin, greased and lined

For the icing:

100g hazelnuts (peeled weight)

125ml double cream

1 tablespoon Frangelico, rum or water

125g dark chocolate

METHOD

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC/gas mark 4. In a large bowl, whisk the egg whites and salt until stiff but not dry. In a separate bowl, beat the butter and Nutella together, and then add the Frangelico (or whatever you're using), egg yolks and ground hazelnuts. - For this step, I used a fork to beat the egg whites until they became stiff as my friend's house did not have a whisk! This is totally not recommended! I ended up whisking the egg whites till my finger blistered!

2. Fold in the cooled, melted chocolate, then lighten the mixture with a large dollop of egg white, which you can beat in as roughly as you want, before gently folding the rest of them in a third at a time.

3. Pour into the prepared tin and cook for 40 minutes or until the cake's beginning to come away at the sides, then let cool on a rack.

4. Toast the hazelnuts in a dry frying pan until the aroma wafts upwards and the nuts are golden-brown in parts: keep shaking the pan so that they don't burn on one side and stay too pallid on others. Transfer to a plate and let cool. This is imperative: if they go on the ganache while hot, it'll turn oily. (Believe me, I speak from experience.) - We chatted while doing this step and ended up burning one side of the hazelnuts!

5. In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, add the cream, liqueur or water and chopped chocolate, and heat gently. Once the chocolate's melted, take the pan off the heat and whisk until it reaches the right consistency to ice the top of the cake. Unmould the cooled cake carefully, leaving it on the base as it will be too difficult to get such a damp cake off in one piece. - We failed this step though. Could be because we did not add enough dark chocolate. The recipe says 125g of dark chocolate but we only added 100g. We tried whisking for the longest time but the consistency remained the same. In the end, we added more nutella chocolate to the mixture and the consistency was better.

6. Ice the top with the chocolate icing, and dot thickly with the whole, toasted hazelnuts. If you have used Frangelico, put shot glasses on the table and serve -We used only water and not rum or frangelico. Perhaps we can try using rum or frangelico the next time and see how it goes.

Fresh out of the oven

With Icing and decorated with hazelnuts!

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Due to our whisking with a fork(!) the cake did not turn out too well. It was rather thick, did not raise well and tasted like a brownie. Well, Michele has gotten a egg beater since then and we will try it again!

Larissa's photoshoot was cancelled as it rained on Friday and was not a good day for a shoot. Next time, next time!