My Snugglebug is two years old!! These have definitely been two of the best and fastest years of my life alhamdulillah :-)
And for his second birthday? All I knew is that the birthday cake had to be epic!
It's obvious I'm not all that talented in the cake decorating department but the taste had to be something else! After much thought I finally came to a decision!
Nutella and Ferrero Rocher cake!!!! Now who won't go nuts for that?
I considered adapting my own recipe for it, but with such a short frame of time I had no room for error. I found the most popularly blogged recipe and gave it a shot!
The result?? A decadent, ultra rich, crazily chocolatey and delicious cake that can make you weak at the knees :-D
It was everything that I wanted his second birthday cake to be and it was wiped out super quickly!!
Here's the recipe:
Cake Layers
- 7 large eggs, room temperature
- ½ cups sugar, granulated
- 2 cups finely ground hazelnuts or hazelnut flour
- 3 Tbsp all purpose flour
- 3 Tbsp cocoa powder
- 3 tsp baking powder
Frosting
- 300 grams unsalted butter, room temperature
- 2¼ cups chopped chocolate or chocolate chips
- ½ cup Nutella
- 1.5 cup wafers, crushed
Decorating
- 10 Ferrero Rochers
- ¾ cups hazelnuts, chopped / or ¾ cups wafers, crushed
Instructions:
Cake Layers:
Preheat oven to 350F. Butter 2 – 8 inch round pans and line with greaseproof baking paper.
In a bowl, Sift flour, cocoa & baking powder. Stir in ground nuts.
In a separate bowl, Whip eggs on high speed, until frothy. Slowly add the sugar and continue whipping until tripled in volume, about 5 minutes.
Slowly, mix in the dry ingredients into the eggs.
Divide the batter evenly between the 2 – 8 inch pans and bake at 350F, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Once baked, leave in the pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack.
Although I was super careful not to over bake the cake, I found it slightly dry once it had cooled from the oven. I think the next steps were really helpful in making this cake super moist and yummy.
In a small pan, I made a light sugar syrup using half parts sugar to half parts water.
Heat 3/4 cup sugar with 3/4 cup water until it comes to a boil. Poke holes using a skewer around both the cake layers and spoon over the sugar syrup equally over the cake and leave for about an hour to absorb.
Make the Frosting:
Melt chocolate in microwave, on low heat, in short intervals, stirring each between each time. Bring to room temperature.
Whip chocolate, butter & Nutella until thoroughly combined.
Assembly:
Once the cakes are cool , you can start assembling it.
Firstly, crush wafers by putting in a ziplock bag, then going over them with a rolling pin or something heavy.
Place a dab of frosting onto a serving platter to secure the cake on to it and then place the first cake layer on it. Generously spread just over a third of the frosting on to the cake and then sprinkle over the crushed wafers.
Place the second cake layer on top of this and spread frosting generously. I also piped some of the frosting around the edge of the cake to neaten it up.
Pipe 8 stars on top of the cake.
Press the crushed wafers or chopped hazelnuts onto the sides of the cake. I used both :-)
Place a Ferrero Rocher on top of each piped star.
Refrigerate the cake but bring it to room temperature completely before serving.
I got the recipe from here.
This cake was super super yummy and amazing. I do however want to create my own version of a Nutella and Ferrero cake that includes a lot more Nutella.
Because really, there isn't ever anything like too much Nutella :-P
-S xx
