Chocolate Hazelnut Slab
Chocolate Hazelnut Slab
Lots of layers of deliciousness
This is a lovely, lovely cake. I don’t know that I have much more to say about it, it’s big, it’s rich, it’s nutty, it’s chocolatey, it’s a very nice cake. It’s been a while since I’ve made anything like this and cutting into a cake like this to see all of your beautiful layers has to be one of the most satisfying feelings, only topped by eating said cake.
Upon first glance it looks like an Opera cake, however, this is not an Opera, dare I say it’s better? No, I daren’t, I don’t want the French to come for me. The difference between this and an Opera is all in the sponge or rather sponges, an Opera cake is made with thin layers of joconde sponge whereas this slab uses two different sponges, a whole egg buttercream and a nutty ganache, so let’s break it down:
Dacquoise; The first and most exciting of our sponges, dacquoise is somewhere between a sponge and a meringue, it’s crunchy of the outside, slightly chewy inside, with a lovely nutty flavour, I’ve amped the crunch up by adding a layer of roasted chopped hazelnuts on top. Dacquoise also presents an excellent opportunity to use up any egg whites, my freezer always seems to be full of them so i’ll take any opportunity I can to use them up.
Chocolate Sponge; This is a really simple sponge recipe, it comes together fairly quickly and adds a nice moist, cocoa heavy layer to our slab.
Buttercream; When my mum ate this cake the first thing she said is “why is the buttercream so delicious!?” this is high praise because my mum has *opinions* about a lot of things and she’ll let me know when something isn’t up to scratch. The reason this buttercream is so delicious is because it’s made with caramelised sugar and hazelnut praline, the caramelised sugar adds so much depth of flavour that works beautifully with the praline. This buttercream is less popular than other buttercreams out there, it’s made with whole eggs that are whipped before hot sugar syrup is poured over, we give the flavour a huge boost by caramelising the sugar first, then adding water and boiling it down to the correct temperature. I like to take my caramel quite dark for this to give it a really punchy flavour.
Ganache; This recipe uses a simple ganache made with half and half milk and dark chocolate with the addition of a load of hazelnut praline, we really want the hazelnuts to pack a punch!
Hazelnut Praline; This is in a few of the elements of this bake, I tend to make a big bath every so often so that I always have it on hand but if you can’t be bothered to make it yourself you can use store bought hazelnut butter or Nutella. I have a full run down on the praline making process, which you can read here.