The Most Delightful Hazelnut Cake

A couple of weeks ago Luke & I baked a cake together and I promised I would post the recipe here. So today I spent the morning with my Mum baking this delicious cake, and now I'm delivering on my promise!

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Serves 8-10 ~ Preparation 20 mins ~ Cooking 45 mins 

For this cake you will need:

• 100g butter, chopped
• 175g dark chocolate, chopped
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 150g hazelnut meal
• 1/3 cup cocoa powder
• 4 eggs, separated

1. Preheat the oven to 180 C/160 FF. Grease a 20cm springform pan and line the base with non-stick baking paper.
2. Place the butter and chocolate into a large heatproof bowl. Stand bowl over pan of barely simmering water, and stir occasionally until melted. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla, sugar, hazelnut meal, sifted cocoa and egg yolks.
3. Using electric beaters, beat the egg whites in a clean bowl until soft peaks form. Mix 1/4 of egg whites into chocolate mixture to soften it. Use a large metal spoon to fold in remaining, and combine until there are no streaks of white, taking care not to lose volume. 
4. Spoon mixture into prepared tin, and bake for 45 mins. Cool in tin. Chill until firm. Run a knife around edge of cake, remove from tin.
5. Place cake onto serving plate and using chocolate frosting mixture (which is optional, but I would definitely recommend finishing your cake off with this!), ice cake. Serve slices of cake!

Chocolate Frosting:

To make chocolate frosting mixture, sift 1 cup of icing sugar mixture and 1 tbsp cocoa powder into a bowl. Add 30g soft butter and stir in 1 1/2 tbsp of boiling water, adding a tiny bit more if needed, beat until smooth. Spread onto cake!

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Enjoy! Let me know if you try this out.