Too Young To Be Grumpy

Ok, Yesterday I took a brave plunge to do some recipe mixing and I wanted to make a wheat-free version of the Chocolate and Hazelnut Cake. I'd already made a couple of wheat-free Chocolate Orange Cakes, so I figured why can't I just do a bit of simple ingredient substitution and all will be well. So instead of using wholewheat flour, as the recipe stated, I used the "flour-substitute" from the chocolate orange cake, which was ground almonds and cocoa. Both of the original cakes were from Esurientes Blog.

I tried it and it worked! I made a cake! A super yummy chocolatey cake! It was a bit brittle and when I tried to move it from the cake tin base to the cake box it cracked in half, but it still worked.



Ingredients

250g Margarine
125g Light Brown Soft Sugar
125g Caster Sugar
4 Eggs
120ml of strong black coffee
200g ground almonds
50g Cocoa, seived
2 heaped teaspoons of baking powder
200g Hazelnuts coasely ground
250g plain chocolate

Method

1. Line springform cake tin with greaseproof


2. Preheat oven to 180^oC


3. Beat margarine, brown and caster sugar together


4. Add eggs one at a time beating after each is added


5. Add in the coffee (the mixture always curdles for me here, but that's ok)


6. Fold in the almonds, baking powder and three quarters of the chopped hazelnuts and chocolate (i.e. keep some back for the top)


7. Mix it all up until it looks like a cake mixture


8. Spoon into cake tin


9. Add remaining quarter of chopped hazelnuts and chocolate to the top


10. Cook for about 1 hour 30 minutes or until the top is springy and a skewer comes out cleanish


11. Leave to cool, but even then it is brittle and need to take care removing the paper.

It really is a yummy recipe, and we went around my folks to pick more plums off the tree today, and it was nearly all gone! It's much moister than the original hazelnut cake, and more chocolateier (because of the cocoa). Yum!