Recipe: Chocolate Hazelnut Cakes

This recipe is from Mario Batali's Babbo Cookbook and it is meant to taste like Nutella in (refined) cake form.  It serves 12.





Ingredients:
-8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
-2 ounces unsweetened chocolate
-4 ounces toasted hazelnuts
-3 tablespoons confectioners' sugar
-1/4 cup premium quality Dutch process cocoa powder
-3/4 cup (1.5 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
-3/4 cup plus 5 tablespoons granulated sugar
-1/3 cup unsweetened hazelnut paste
-6 eggs, separated
-2 teaspoons strong brewed espresso, cooled completely
-2 teaspoons frangelico (hazelnut liqueur)
-2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Butter twelve 3-inch cake molds or one 9-inch springform pan and set aside.
2. Fill the bottom of a pan 1/3 full with water and bring to a simmer over medium-low heat. Place a medium stainless steel bowl over the water and melt the chocolates together, stirring constantly. Once melted, set aside to cool.
3. In a food processor, pulse the hazelnuts with the confectioners' sugar and cocoa to form a fine, sand-like mixture.
4. Using an electric mixer, beat the butter and 3/4 cup of the granulated sugar until very light and fluffy. If you use a sugar substitute like honey or agave, use 1/2 cup (It won't become fluffy though and the end taste will not be quite the same). Beat in the hazelnut paste, scraping down the sides of the bowl with a spatula, then beat in the egg yolks one at a time. Beat in the espresso, Frangelico, and vanilla extract. Lastly, beat in the melted chocolate. Then fold in the nut mixture from step 3.
5. In a separate mixing bowl, beat the egg whites until foamy. Gradually add the remaining 5 tablespoons if sugar and continue beating until soft peaks form. Using a rubber spatula, gently fold the egg whites into the cake batter. Divide the batter among the baking molds or pour into the springform pan.
6. Bake the cakes until they puff and crack slightly, about 14 minutes for the cake molds and 45-50 for the springform. (My springform pan was dark grey, and so absorbs heat faster, so I found that 40 minutes was optimal.) Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack. When the cakes are almost completely cool, remove the moulds and chill in the refrigerator until firm. The cakes will last up to 1 week refrigerated in an airtight container (but it's so good there's no way there would be any left at that point!)

Notes: I did not manage to find any hazelnut paste, not even at my local Italian specialty grocer so I omitted that part of the recipe. Although I imagine you could easily substitute dulce de leche since the texture and the taste would be consistent with the recipe, and it is much easier to find dulce de leche. If you do use dulce the leche, I would drastically cut down on the amount of sugar since dulce de leche is so sweet. Be careful not to overcook it. The first time I made it, leaving it in for the full recommended cooking time, it was too dry. So do some toothpick tests before the cooking time is up. You don't want the batter to be all liquid, but you also don't want the toothpick to come up completely clean.