Nigella's Nutella Cake

Well, this one is a very very very late post. So late that in fact, the friend who I made this cake with has given up on me ever posting about it. And she wanted to be mentioned by name too. So here it is. I made this cake with CHEA LU. Keep that in mind. :P She picked the recipe and all. Is from *the* Nigella Lawson so it has to be good, in her mind. So here we go!



What you need:
6 large eggs
Pinch of salt
125g soft unsalted butter
400g Nutella (1 whole large jar!)
1 tablespoon water
100g ground hazelnuts
100g dark chocolate, melted

For the ganache icing:
100g hazelnuts
125mL double cream
125g dark chocolate, chopped into small-ish pieces

What you do:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease and line a 23cm springform tin.
2. In a large bowl, whisk the egg whites and salt until stiff but not dry. In a separate bowl, whisk the Nutella and butter together, then add the water, egg yolks and ground hazelnuts.
3. Fold in the cooled melted chocolate, then lighten the mixture with a large spoonful of egg white. Beat this in, then gently fold in the rest of the egg whites, a third at a time.
4. Pour into the prepared tin and cook for 40 minutes or until the cake is starting to come away on the sides, then leave to cool on a rack.
5. Meanwhile, 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 do not burn. Transfer to a plate and leave to cool.
6. In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, add the cream and the chopped chocolate and heat gently. Once the chocolate is melted, take the pan off the heat and whisk to the right consistency for icing.
7. Unmould the cooled cake carefully. Ice the top with the chocolate icing and dot with the toasted hazelnuts. Serve!

We made our hazelnuts into a creepy looking heart, as you can see, hehe. Truth be told, this cake turned out *very* well, considering we didn't have any weighing scales. It helped that it didn't need flour or sugar, since we can roughly guesstimate the rest. And of course, Nutella. One whole jar of Nutela. Umph! <3

Mmmm, is there anything better than Nutella? Truth be told, I was very slightly disappointed with this cake. Oh it was good, but... I thought it would taste more of Nutella. D: Since we couldn't find ground hazelnuts, we first used hand-chopped hazelnuts on our first try. We didn't quite like having the hazelnut pieces in there so in our second round, we used ground almonds instead. Eh, turned out well enough.

Also, one last thing, although I love love warm brownies and cookies, the warm version of this cake was a bit meh to me. It taste much much much better after a night in the fridge. Seriously. So cooling it is highly recommended. Other than that, hope you do enjoy!

Instead of a quote, I found this ode to Nutella poem here. "You look so good, taste so nice, I'd even eat you on fried rice" LOL, do have a look!