Nutella cake

Seeing as every other food blogger under the sun has done the Nutella cake (e.g. here, here, here, here, here and here) and not wanting to feel left out, I thought I really should do it as well. Not to mention the fact that I've been desperate to see how satisfying it would be to empty a whole jar of Nutella in one go.

Ingredients for the cake
400g jar Nutella
125g soft, unsalted butter
6 eggs, seperated
120g dark chocolate
100g ground hazelnuts
1 tbsp Frangelico, rum or water

For the ganache
125ml double cream
125g dark chocolate
1 tbsp Frangelico, rum or water

Beat butter, Nutella and Frangelico together until combined (BTW, I don't think Frangelico really exists. It sounds like it's been made-up, like Brangelina or frenemies which is why I used rum instead). Beat in the egg yolks one at a time, saving the egg whites for later. Add the ground hazelnuts and melted, cooled chocolate. Fold in whisked egg whites and bake in a lined 23cm springform tin at gas mark 4 for about 45 minutes or until a tester comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack.

To make the ganache, you simply heat the cream over a LOW heat to which you add the chocolate then keep stirring until it has melted. I really stupidly started doing the stupid washing-up and didn't see the cream bubbling away with the chocolate inside, burning at the bottom of the pan. This, really unfortunately, led to this mess:

(Warning: Some readers may find the following pictures offensive and/or disturbing)


ARGGHH! How could I mess up something so simple? And what IS that yellow liquid? I obviously couldn't spread that on top of the cake and so had to go to the Co-op AGAIN and once AGAIN be convinced that their "dark" chocolate really does have a cocoa content of 63% and above. Why isn't there such a thing as a Waitrose Local? The second attempt went much more smoothly because I was actually paying attention. This is what it should look like:


Ahhh, much better! This was then lightly whipped and then spread on the cooled cake. I found that it took on the consistency of butter cream although judging by the other blogger's attempts, I'm not sure how ganache is meant to look.


Even though there's a whole jar of Nutella in the cake, I think perhaps it would have been better to add some extra sugar as it is rather rich and hence not great for children even though you might think that kids would be this cakes target demographic. It is ultimately a tacky but fun version of Torta Caprese which, after Christmas cake, is one of my most favourite cakes. And maybe if I didn't have such a stuck up view of chocolate nut cakes, then this one would soon be winging its way to my best cakes list for its fudgy, brownie-like qualities.

(And if you're planning on taking photos of the cake, it's probably best not to display it on that really naff Argos plate your Mum fobbed off on to you because even she didn't want it.)