Chocolate and Hazelnut Cake.

You know that time when you want to bake and have a quick look through the shelves and cupboards to suss the options available. Well this is where this baby was conceived. Right up to when I decided I wanted to try to replicate some awesome looking caramel hazelnuts I'd seen on Pinterest, when a shopping trip was needed for whole hazelnuts. After making daft looking cakes like Oxford Rocks with it's leopard spot sponge, and before that the Valentines cake I wanted to pull things back a bit towards the basic tasty and good looking cake that takes about a tenth of the hours to make. I was quite happy with the Easter pimped Honey cake but even that had decoration un-relating to the actual cake, so with this one, I actually managed to keep the decoration chocolate and hazelnut based. I even felt a bit bad for veering off into the world of caramel lol.

1st May - Chocolate Celebration Cake version added below the choc/hazelnut. :)

Ingredients:

• 250g Golden Caster Sugar
• 130g Unsalted Butter (Room temp)
• 2 Free range medium eggs
• 30ml Sunflower oil
• 80ml Milk
• 2 TBSP Nutella
• 200g Plain Flour
• 2 tsp Baking powder
• 40g Cocoa powder
• 30g Ground Almonds

Filling and sides:

• 150g Unsalted butter (Room temp)
• 2 TBSP Nutella
• 1 TBSP Milk
• 30g Cocoa powder
• 300g Icing sugar

Topping:

• 60g Double cream
• 120g Dark chocolate
• 15g Unsalted butter

Extras:

• 3 Hazelnuts
• 50g Hazelnut bits
• 30g Granulated sugar

Preparation:

• Turn the oven on to 170c
• Prep two 7" or 8" tins, either by greasing and lining with baking paper or spraying with cake release spray.
• Put the butter and sugar into a mixing bowl and cream together.
• Keep mixing. Add one egg at a time.
• Add the oil
• Add the milk.
• Add the Nutella.
• Sift the flour, baking powder, and cocoa into a bowl and add gradually to the mixing bowl.
• Add the ground almonds.
• Mix until just fully combined.
• Split evenly between the tins and bake for about 25 mins.
• Check they're cooked with a cocktail stick or knife which should come out clean when inserted into the centre of the sponges.
• Allow to cool in the tins for 15 mins, then tip out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.
• To make the buttercream, beat the butter and Nutella together for a couple of minutes.
• Sift the icing sugar and cocoa, and add to the butter mix a bit at a time.
• Add the milk and mix for at least 5 mins.
• Spread on one sponge and then place the other sponge on top so that the 2nd sponge's flat base is facing upwards.
• Apply buttercream to the sides of the cake with a palette knife. You can do this properly by applying a thin crumb layer first, which traps any loose crumbs, and then another layer. 
• Press crushed hazelnuts into the sides of the cake in whatever style takes your fancy. I poured some out at the base and then pushed up into place with a palette knife. 
• For the topping, pour the cream into a saucepan and heat until bubbles start to form at the sides.
• Turn the heat off and add the chocolate. Stir gently until melted.
• Add the butter and stir until melted.
• Allow to cool for 5 mins.
• Using a teaspoon, dribble some of the choc mix down the sides of the cake.
• Then spread the rest over the top of the cake.
• Decorate with chopped hazelnuts as required.
• To make my not-quite-what-they-were-meant-to-be caramel hazelnuts, I melted 30g of granulated sugar in a small saucepan, just gently moving it with a spatula as it melts. I then arrange 5 hazelnuts on manipulated paper clips sandwiched between 2 cartons of fruit juice and two tins of beans. I then sprayed a baking tray with cake release spray and placed it underneath the nuts, the hazelnuts. I then dribbled the melted sugar over the hazelnuts. What I was looking for was a long, sleek, single pointy caramel finger, like the T-1000's finger in Terminator :) I think that involves dunking the nuts in the caramel or allowing it to cool a bit because when I dribbled the caramel over the nuts it tended to fall off before it got right round to the underside. Also 2 flat juice cartons weren't quite high enough and the strands backed up on themselves and contorted or snapped off. I'll find out next time :)
• Allow to cool and place on the cake. You can also string some of the caramel and use that as decoration.
• Eat cake :)

I'm submitting this production into May's Alphabakes. Alphabakes is run monthly, alternately by Ros at The More Than Occasional Baker, and this month's by Caroline at Caroline Makes... This months letter is 'H', and what letter does hazelnut begin with children? That's right! :)

Chocolate Celebration Cake.

I contemplated giving this fella his own page, and might do, but for now he's so linked to the cake above I think I'll tag him down here...and also the photos were a bit pants :)

Same recipe as above but:

No Hazelnuts.
No Nutella.
All over buttercream with 250g butter, 250g icing sugar, 1 TBSP milk and 2 heaped TBSP cocoa powder.
A sprinkling of cocoa powder.
2 flakes, crushed.
2 bags of maltesers.
1 bag choc buttons.
Melt dark and white choc onto baking paper or a sheet of acetate, then chill, for the shards, and also to drizzle over the wired maltesers.
I was going to decorate with milk and white choc curls as well, done with a peeler, but they didn't come out nice enough so I ended up just putting a few right in the centre where the wires go in.

Tunage courtesy of course from Hazelnut O'Connor - Eighth Day

Rabbit action! Watership Down featured a rabbit called Hazelnut! (Are you sure? - ed.) Written by Mike Batt of the Wombles fame, Art Garfunkel - Bright Eyes.

Talking of Terminator fingers, a Tuuuuuuuune! from T2 - Guns and Roses - You Could Be Mine

...and finally, random gorgeous tune of the day. One of the best from Elastica - Never Here.

What's that? You want to see Julianne Regan lipsyncing on Japanese TV? Why certainly! Here's All About Eve - Every Angel.

Chocolate selection Pack 1

After making a few batches of the original choc truffles I got rather excited about making more chocolates that maybe, just maybe, looked like those chocolates you can purchase in ye olde shoppes. So after snooping around on the net I decided to buy some little silicon moulds and play with a few ideas and flavours.

I chose these individual moulds because I wanted to play with a lot of shapes for as little money as possible. A tray mould would be easier if you wanted to line each mould with hard chocolate first for eg making truffle or caramel centres, but these work very well for making hard chocs. I tried a truffle mix in these with a view to freezing and then peeling off the moulds but even then the mix was too flexible to come out with out being misshapen.
The hazelnut truffles I did try, then, with a swift bit of manipulation, became truffle balls.
      When using these moulds, even though they peel back off of the chocolate, it's still a good idea to give them a bit of non-stick help. I did this by means of putting all the moulds in a 9" x 9" tin, tilting it, and giving them a light spray of Cake Release Spray, then dabbing any excess off with kitchen towel. Not sure if the solid chocs would come out ok without spray, but better safe than sorry.
      So, the 3 new flavours I tried (In the top photo - The Snowball in the middle was a Damson Gin Liqueur truffle rolled in grated white chocolate, and the plain chocolate one is a naked Hazelnut Crunch.) were the following:

Hazelnut crunch:

• 200g Dark choc (around 50% cocoa)
• 200g Dark choc (70%+ cocoa)
• 150g Double cream
• 2 tbsp Roasted hazelnut bits.
• 2 tbsp Nutella (Or similar spread)
• 20g crushed Coco-Pops (About a variety pack size)
• 100g crushed crunchy cereals eg Rice Krispies, Coco-pops, Honey Nut loops

Preparation:

1. Chop the 200g 50% chocolate into small pieces.
2. Heat the cream in a saucepan until it starts to bubble at the sides.
3. Add the chocolate to the cream. Leave for a few minutes then stir gently for a while until thoroughly mixed. 
4. Add the Nutella and mix thoroughly.
5. Add the Hazelnut bits and 20g Coco-pops and mix together thoroughly.
6. Pour the mix into a shallow bowl and chill in the fridge for at least an hour
7. Line a tray with baking paper, and spoon out marble sized lumps of truffle mix rolling each one into a rough ball shape.
8. Place the tray of rough truffle balls back in the fridge for for at least 30 mins.
9. Just before they're ready melt 200g 70%+cocoa  chocolate either in a bowl over simmering water or in the microwave, heating 30 secs at a time.
10. Break up the cereals. I put mine in a deep tupperware and squished with the end of a rolling pin. and place in a shallow bowl
11. Take the truffles out of the fridge and roll each one into a neater ball. If they get too messy whilst doing this then put back in the fridge for 5 mins.
12. Chuck a truffle ball into the melted chocolate then fish out with a fork, forks or cocktail sticks, hold for about 10 secs while the the excess drips off, then chuck it into the crushed cereals, and cover with cereal. Leave that one and do another ball in the melted choc, when that's in the cereal roll the first ball around in the cereal. Then do another ball into the chocolate and into the cereal. By this time the first ball should be cool enough so the choc doesn't run anymore and will be solid to handle. Place it on a tray. Continue like this, with 2 or 3 truffles in the cereal all the time until finished.(It's simpler than I make it sound lol) 
13. Any left over melted choc can be poured onto some baking paper to cool, then broken up and eaten kept to be melted another day.

White Chocolate Peppermint Crunch:

These nice solid chocolates I made in the prep'd moulds and they came out lovely loike :)

• 200g white chocolate
• 1 tsp Peppermint extract
• 1 heaped tablespoon Granulated sugar.
• Melted dark chocolate for decoration.

Preparation:

1. Melt the chocolate
2. Add the peppermint extract (As much as you want to your taste) and stir in thoroughly
3. Add the sugar and stir in gently
4. Teaspoon the chocolate into the Prep'd moulds
5. Leave to cool completely
6. When cool, put in the fridge for 15 mins
7. Melt the dark chocolate
8. Remove from moulds onto a piece of baking paper
9. Either drizzle the melted dark chocolate from a spoon tip over the chocolates, or use a fine tip nozzle and piping bag to do more detailed and controlled decoration. (I used spoon for mine)
10. Eat.

Dark Chocolate Orange Crunch:

Another easy chocolate to make with the moulds using as strong a dark chocolate as you like and incorporating the rather posh, exclusive ingredient of crushed Frosties to add a crunch :) (I'm a classy geeza!) As you can see from the photos the decoration is, well, frankly, bloody atrocious! lol I experimented with my first baking paper piping bag, and instead of being sensible and sliding in a fine nozzle that I had, I just snipped the end to make a little hole, but, well, it didn't work well and it looks like a drunk T-Rex trying to balance on a Pilates ball did the piping. Ah well, they taste ace. You need:

• 200g Dark chocolate.
• 1 tsp Orange extract (Or to taste)
• Variety pack of Frosties, crushed, or blitzed in processor. (About 17g)
• Melted white chocolate and food colouring (Orange, or Red & Yellow)

Preparation:

1. Melt the chocolate.
2. Add Orange extract and stir in thoroughly.
3. Add Frosties and mix in gently.
4. Spoon into prep'd moulds.
5. Leave to cool completely.
6. Place in fridge for 15 mins then remove from moulds onto baking paper.
7. Melt small amount of white chocolate and stir in food colouring to the colour you want.
8. Drizzle or pipe ex-white chocolate to decorate.
9. Cool and eat.

Some tunes for the chocolate!

One of the best Oasis tracks - Oasis - Some might say (Fact - The original title was Some might say that chocolates are bad for us but I say they aren't! alright?)

Oh, ok, another one of the best tracks, Oasis - Live Forever from the awesome live DVD Familiar to Millions, and if you want to feel bloody old it was recorded July 21st 2000! (Fact - The original title for the song was 'If you want to live forever eat lots of chocolate!'

...and finally, I'm going for another rather spiffing tune from that era, the wonderfully catchy Ash - Burn Baby Burn. (Fact - The original title for this song was 'Be careful to melt your chocolate slowly or you might burn it, and baby, you really don't want to burn it. )

Ah, more organic blogginess, after having a snoopy through Elpiniki's Greek tradition blog (See comments) I was reminded of this absolute dance classic from La Rissa - I do both Jay and Jane. I had no idea La Rissa was a Greek county! Education is fun kids! This version is taken from 2001 Club Nation album.