Thursday, March 24, 2011

Hazelnut Torte-Paganini


Hello, my dear foodies! Thank you for all your kind words, and support in my time of absence. I am very busy, but will be dropping by more, hopefully! Today is my daughter's B-Day, and I wanted to share with you this wonderful cake I made for her. Happy Birthday baby!

Hazelnut Torte (Paganini)

First make the two fillings.
Chocolate filling:5 egg yolks, and 1 whole egg
50 g/1.75 oz dark chocolate
150g/ 5.25 oz sugar
250g/ about 9 oz butter or margarine, unsalted

Mix egg yolks, egg, and sugar until nicely incorporated, and then cook, with chocolate, in a double boiler. Cool down completely, and then add butter, or margarine cut into thin slices, and mix until smooth. Let it sit in the fridge until needed.

Vanilla filling:
4 egg yolks
5 Tbs corn starch
1 vanilla sugar (9g/0.32 oz)
6 Tbs sugar
0.7 l/ 3 cups milk
0.5l/2 cups whipped cream, whipped + 1 stabilizer
(I use the whipped cream powder, 3 x (40g/1.41oz) with about 1 ½ cups milk)

Mix egg yolks, vanilla sugar, sugar, and corn starch with about half cup milk (taken from the 3 cups). Let the remainder of milk boil, and when it comes to boil, pour in the mixture, and stir constantly until nice and thick. Cool down completely, and then gradually add the whipped cream, whipped with stabilizer. Vanilla cream, when cooled may be very tough to mix, and blending the whipped cream in can be a bit challenging, so add the whipped cream, mix a little, then cool again, and mix some more until smooth. If you mix it in one round, you will find that it can heat up, and become runny! Thanks to Jenn, I am making these corrections.

For the base:10 egg whites
280g/ about 10 oz sugar
280g/ about 10 oz roasted, finely ground hazelnuts
2 Tbsp baking cocoa powder

Preheat oven to 395 F. Mix egg whites until stiff, slowly adding sugar, then hazelnuts with cocoa powder. Bake in a large spring form pan (8"), or a square 9”x13” baking pan. Either use parchment paper, or grease the dish before baking. Baking time depends on your oven, check often. As usual, it is done when the toothpick comes out clean.

Cool down the cake, then poke it all over, and soak (but not to much) with milk. Put the cake on a stand of your choice, then put the spring form ring part back on (or around it, you know), and then put the fillings, that’s how you get perfect layers, and everything is kept in place, and evenly spread. When ready to serve, or giveaway (yeah, right), you just do the finishing touch. Fist top it with the chocolate filling, then vanilla, then decorate as you wish; whipped cream on the top works the best, but you can also sprinkle the top with coarse ground hazelnuts.

This cake is a true bite of heaven, prepare it to compliment a simple dinner! Enjoy!

Recipe adapted from Coolinarika.    http://cafechocolada.blogspot.com/2008/11/hazelnut-torte-paganini.html

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