flourless chocolate hazelnut cake

There's quite a chasm between the sudden hankering for cake and baking one. A chasm consisting of finding a recipe, checking you have ingredients to hand, deciphering the recipe and summoning the motivation to tackle the various techniques and steps (my mum says that for her the most dreaded sentence in any recipe is ‘cream the butter and sugar’ to which she always answers “no. I will not be doing that” before slamming the cookbook shut.) Too often you might find yourself making do with nibbling on some cooking chocolate instead.

What if I told you that you could make a delicious cake without much bother? 15 minutes hands on at most. No creaming butter and sugar. A cake whose recipe is essentially distilled down to 2 steps. A cake that is so forgiving that if you undercook it, you're left with blissfully rich and gooey fondant in the centre of the cake. And if you overcook it, the middle stays miraculously decadent while the outside develops a delicious crunch.

Still on the fence? Look at my photo of the cake. See all those pretty hazelnuts and toffee shards? That's not because I'm fancy, it's because the entire middle of my cake collapsed 25 mins into baking, leaving a solid rim around the perimeter. My cake resembled a crater volcano. This could've been caused by several things. However, it was still delicious, and it didn't look or taste like a mistake at all!

In a nutshell it's this: separate egg whites and yolks. Mix the yolks with all the other ingredients, then whip the egg whites and fold it into the cake batter before baking for about 40 mins.

Try it. It will become a family favourite, I guarantee.

​Serves up to 12
Prep Time: 15 mins, Cook Time: 40 mins

Ingredients:
150g dark chocolate drops 
150g butter, cut into small cubes
1/3 cup (35g) cocoa powder
1/3 cup (80ml) hot water
1 1/3 cup (295g) firmly packed brown sugar
1 cup (100g) hazelnut meal
4 eggs, separated
1 tablespoon cocoa powder, extra

Method:
Preheat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan-forced). Grease a deep 20cm-round cake pan; line base and sides with baking paper.

Melt the butter and dark chocolate together using the stovetop or microwave. (See below recipe for “how to” details).

In a large bowl, mix cocoa powder and the hot water together with a fork until smooth. Add the melted butter and chocolate mixture, sugar, hazelnut meal and egg yolks; stir until just combined.

Beat egg whites in a small bowl with an electric mixer until soft peaks form; fold into chocolate mixture in two batches. Make sure you do this gently- you want to keep the batter light and airy.

Pour mixture into pan; bake about 45 mins to 1 hour. You'll know it's done when you stick a skewer into the centre and it comes back out with no raw batter stuck to it. Stand cake in the pan for 15 minutes before turning, top-side up, onto a wire rack to cool. Dust with the sifted extra cocoa.

Melting Chocolate and Butter Together, 2 Ways:
Stovetop: ¼ fill a saucepan with water. Place a heat-proof mixing bowl over the saucepan. Place butter and chocolate pieces in the bowl. Turn the stove on to medium heat and stir the mixture constantly until it's melted together. Remove the bowl from heat and set aside to cool a little.

Microwave: Place butter and chocolate in a microwave safe mixing bowl and heat on medium power in short, 30 second bursts, stirring well in-between. This should only take a minute or two. Set aside to cool a little.

Pimp My Recipe 
Use milk chocolate drops instead of dark. I like to use some of each.

Orange version: Add the  zest & juice of 1 orange to the cocoa powder and hot water mixture.  You'll need to account for the extra liquid from the orange juice so this is my suggestion: Squeeze the orange first to see how much juice it gives you. Subtract that amount from the ½ cup hot water so you have ½ liquid all up. Mix the juice, hot water, cocoa powder and zest together then proceed with the recipe as normal.

Mocha version: Dissolve 1 heaped teaspoon of instant coffee into the hot water and cocoa powder mixture. Or, instead of using hot water to mix with the cocoa powder, use ½ cup freshly brewed coffee instead.

Top cake with hazelnut toffee: stir ½ cup caster sugar in a small saucepan and ½ cup roasted hazelnuts - whole, chopped or a combination. When mixture starts to colour (about 5-8 mins) pour directly onto a lined baking tray. When cool, break into shards and scatter then over the cake 

No hazelnut meal? This recipe works just as well with almond meal.