Think of 16-16: Chocolate-Frosted Nut Cake like a Nutella cake–same flavor profile (chocolate and hazelnuts), and maybe even somewhat healthier?
This is a pretty simple cake–it’s just one layer, and all you have to do is frost and garnish it. Or you can do it like me and make little individual cakes instead.
Note that you’re going to want to do a reverse James Bond on this cake–in this case, stirred, not beaten.
Ingredients. I’m going to swap coconut milk for whipping cream and coconut oil for butter. I’m not confident in my aquafaba skills yet (especially for a chocolate cake), so we’ll go with real eggs for now.
It’s hard to see, but that’s 6 ounces exactly.
Combining the batter ingredients and taking care to stir them. I didn’t even use the mixer (for this part, at least).
As I mentioned (and you’ve seen), I made little individual cakes instead of one big one. Helps with portion control. 😉
Greased the cups and poured the batter right in. These aren’t the kind of baking cups that use liners.
Starting to mix the frosting ingredients–no eggs yet, you can still see them whole in the background.
Looks good so far.
A little uneven, but the tops (bottoms?) get sliced off anyway to make them less wobbly.
Toasting the hazelnuts–another job I used to do often during my restaurant days. My station was in charge of (among many other things) assembling desserts , and we often topped some of them with toasted/chopped hazelnuts. This method is the exact same as we did it there.
I didn’t show you the process of whipping the egg white, but you’ve seen it enough here already. Mixed the meringue into the frosting as directed.
After the cakes cooled–no sticking, so that’s good.
Got most of the skins off with a paper towel, but a regular towel works well too.
Checking back in on the frosting…
Pulsed the toasted hazelnuts in the food processor a few times to chop them up. I didn’t keep any whole ones, since I planned to just top all the little cakes with the chopped version.
Frosting the cakes–doing it on a rack over a pan makes it easy to glaze without making a mess.
Topping with the chopped nuts, as mentioned.
After frosting and garnishing, I popped the whole rack into the fridge to set the frosting, since I planned to individually wrap them once cooled and hardened.
Final picture, as served. Each one of these is a “serving”, and now they’re individually portioned and wrapped. Good modification to make in pandemic times.
Grade: A
