1 Cake Ø 16 cm
For some time I have been thinking about baking a nougat cake with hazelnuts. Nice and chocolaty, without buttercream and hopefully not too dense. I found a simple recipe, which I would like to review here: What worked well, what did not work at all and whether I can recommend the recipe. Have fun 🙂
As you have surely noticed, I mostly bake small cakes with a diameter of about 16 cm. At the moment, hardly any celebrations or large coffee parties take place, that I would need more cake for – and for us the desire to eat the cake passes after about three days, when we would still have plenty of leftovers from a larger cake. This is why I adapted the recipe to a small cake for approx. 3-4 people. And I can assure you: There is not a single piece left!
-Josefine
First, let’s talk about my experiences. Do NOT follow this, but the recipe below. 🙂
I started with melting the nougat in a hot water bath. Unfortunately, I only had 150 g nougat, not the required 200 g. So I quickly added 50 g Nutella (by now you might have gotten the impression that I start baking without checking if I have all the necessary ingredients – and with this is absolutely correct).
In the meantime, the recipe asked to beat the eggs with water. Check. Oh crap, the EGGS MUST BE SEPARATED BEFORE. Too late in my case, so had to work it out somehow. I stirred them into the melted nougat; combined flour, nuts and baking powder and gently folded in. Done. 45 minutes of baking later, I had a highly risen dough. Looked pretty good, seemed like I had overcome the egg debacle.
Next step: cheese cream. I have slightly adjusted the quantities, so that I ended up with a little more. I needed it – unfortunately-, because the lining of the cake does not always work out perfectly. So everything was nicely prepared according to instructions and quickly I had a delicious cheese cream, which I temporarily parked in the refrigerator.
At that point I became a little confused though: the heading in the recipe said „Coat with chocolate cream“. But what should I coat? My problem: After the cooling time I had a relatively solid layer on the chocolate cream and everything was liquid underneath. The recipe has awesome reviews online, so I Must have done something wrong. I decided to add the chocolate cream to the cream cheese and mix gently. Turns out: that was a good idea!
I spread this cheese cream on each layer. I just hoped that the somewhat squishy bottom would hold as the second layer. With the remaining cheese cream I covered the whole cake. The chopped hazelnuts make the cream very chunky and I’m forgiven for my clumsiness when lining the cake; perfect! To decorate, I took a few spoons of Nutella and put a hazelnut on top. But oops, I miscounted, so I ended up with only 11 instead of 12 pieces. Still ready to go!
Conclusion:
PROs
CONs
- The cake is super delicious!
- The coarse cream cheese cream forgives many mistakes when lining the cake.
- The light-dark contrast looks quite nice.
- The recipe was very easy to adjust to a small springform pan.
- I have not been able to implement the recipe 1:1. But it may well be up to me.
- The cake has become quite dense, which I actually wanted to avoid.
Conclusion: It is a super delicious cake that I can only recommend to everyone! Therefore, you can find the original recipe below, with modified quantities for a small springform pan. Make sure to try, it’s worth it! 🙂
Nougat Cake
You need
- 150 g Nougat
- 50 g Nut-Nougat-Cream
- 4 Eggs
- 80 g Powdered Sugar
- 4 TBSP Hot Water
- 1 Pinch Salt
- 70 g Flour
- 1 Pk. Baking Powder
- 100 g Ground Hazelnuts
- 300 g Plain Cream Cheese
- 150 g White Chocolate
- 70 g Ground Hazelnuts
- 250 g Whipping Cream
- 25 g Dark Chocolate
- 12 Hazelnuts
- 2 TBSP Nutella
- 50 g Ground Nuts
Here’s how to do it
- Melt the nougat and Nutella in a water bath. In the meantime, beat the eggs with 4 tablespoons of hot water and a little salt until foamy. The volume should approximately double. Sift in the sugar and stir in the melted nougat cream. Mix flour, baking powder and nuts in a separate bowl and fold in carefully.
- The dough should now be poured into a small springform pan with a diameter of about 16cm and baked in a preheated oven at 180°C for about 45 minutes.
- For the cream cheese, melt the white chocolate in a water bath and then mix with the cream cheese until creamy. In the meantime, whip the cream until stiff and fold into the cream cheese mixture. Finally, carefully roast the hazelnuts in a pan and also add to the cream. Now dissolve the dark chocolate in about 50 g of cream and also add to the cream cheese mix. Refrigerate.
- Now let the base cool completely. Then it can be cut into 4 equal-sized layers.
- Layer one after over the other and spread cream cheese mixture on each layer. Finally, the entire cake and the side edges are covered with cream cheese mix and decorated with 12 Nutella dots and 12 hazelnuts on the sides. In addition, the chopped hazelnuts can be spread decoratively on the cake. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
- Done!
