I still had some gianduja that I was saving for the right baking project and I decided to use it on Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh's "Hazelnut Crumble Cake with Gianduja (or Nutella) Icing" from Sweet. From the recipe name, I would have expected the cake be baked in a square or rectangular pan and be covered with nuggets of crumble topping. But the cake is baked in a Bundt pan (or mini Bundts) and the hazelnut crumble is a powdery mixture of nuts, sugar, and spices that is layered inside the cake batter.
Making the hazelnut crumble is easy enough -- you grind hazelnuts, sugar, cinnamon, and salt in the food processor. The cake itself is basically a sour cream vanilla cake, but the method is slightly complicated and requires dirtying a few bowls and a food processor (again). The first step in making the batter is a technique that I've never come across before; you mix sour cream, Greek yogurt, and baking soda, and let the mixture stand for 15 minutes until it becomes puffy and airy. Then you mix eggs and sugar in a food processor and add room temperature butter, rum, vanilla, and the sour cream-Greek yogurt mixture. You transfer the mixture from the food processor to a mixing bowl and fold in the sifted dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, and salt).
Whether you're using miniature Bundt pans or a full-sized one as I did, you grease and flour the pan(s) and then put in three layers of cake batter that alternate with three layers of the hazelnut crumble, ending with crumble on top that you press gently into the batter. There was a lot of crumble and I tried to keep it away from the edges of the pan but I couldn't manage it. I baked the cake and unmolded it while it was still warm; it came out of the pan easily without any difficulty.
After the cake was completely cooled, I drizzled on a ganache icing made from gianduja and heavy cream (if you don't have gianduja, the recipe provides an alternative icing made with milk chocolate, Nutella, and cream). Before the icing set, I sprinkled on some thinly sliced hazelnuts. I tried slicing the nuts on a mandoline as recommended by the recipe, but I found that to be impossible so I pulled out a knife and cut them by hand.
When I started cutting the cake, I noticed that small bits of cake were falling off of the bottom on the narrow end of some of the slices; you can see a chunk of cake just barely still hanging on to the slice in the photo above. I was slicing the cake pretty thin (I normally cut a full-sized Bundt cake into 24 slices when I'm taking it into my office), but I think the problem stemmed from the hazelnut crumble extending all the way to the edges of the pan. There were places where the layer of crumble completely bifurcated the cake and the layers of cake on either side were not securely bonded to each other.
Loose bits of cake aside, I enjoyed this cake. The cake itself had a very classic, familiar, sour cream coffee cake flavor and texture. I had a hard time making out the hazelnut crumble inside the cake. While it looked like a lot of crumble when I was layering it in the pan, as you can see in the photo above, the layers were quite thin and I couldn't taste any hazelnut flavor in the cake itself. The only hazelnut I tasted was in delicious gianduja ganache, which had a fabulous smooth hazelnut-chocolate flavor. But to me, this cake didn't seem like anything particularly special. It just tasted like a sour cream cake with gianduja on top.
I would have liked some more hazelnut flavor in the cake itself, maybe from some chopped nuts in the batter, or a thicker layer of filling that included with bigger pieces of nuts. The cake is good, but I wouldn't make it again.
Recipe: "Hazelnut Crumble Cake with Gianduja Icing" from Sweet by Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh.
Making the hazelnut crumble is easy enough -- you grind hazelnuts, sugar, cinnamon, and salt in the food processor. The cake itself is basically a sour cream vanilla cake, but the method is slightly complicated and requires dirtying a few bowls and a food processor (again). The first step in making the batter is a technique that I've never come across before; you mix sour cream, Greek yogurt, and baking soda, and let the mixture stand for 15 minutes until it becomes puffy and airy. Then you mix eggs and sugar in a food processor and add room temperature butter, rum, vanilla, and the sour cream-Greek yogurt mixture. You transfer the mixture from the food processor to a mixing bowl and fold in the sifted dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, and salt).
Whether you're using miniature Bundt pans or a full-sized one as I did, you grease and flour the pan(s) and then put in three layers of cake batter that alternate with three layers of the hazelnut crumble, ending with crumble on top that you press gently into the batter. There was a lot of crumble and I tried to keep it away from the edges of the pan but I couldn't manage it. I baked the cake and unmolded it while it was still warm; it came out of the pan easily without any difficulty.
When I started cutting the cake, I noticed that small bits of cake were falling off of the bottom on the narrow end of some of the slices; you can see a chunk of cake just barely still hanging on to the slice in the photo above. I was slicing the cake pretty thin (I normally cut a full-sized Bundt cake into 24 slices when I'm taking it into my office), but I think the problem stemmed from the hazelnut crumble extending all the way to the edges of the pan. There were places where the layer of crumble completely bifurcated the cake and the layers of cake on either side were not securely bonded to each other.
Loose bits of cake aside, I enjoyed this cake. The cake itself had a very classic, familiar, sour cream coffee cake flavor and texture. I had a hard time making out the hazelnut crumble inside the cake. While it looked like a lot of crumble when I was layering it in the pan, as you can see in the photo above, the layers were quite thin and I couldn't taste any hazelnut flavor in the cake itself. The only hazelnut I tasted was in delicious gianduja ganache, which had a fabulous smooth hazelnut-chocolate flavor. But to me, this cake didn't seem like anything particularly special. It just tasted like a sour cream cake with gianduja on top.
I would have liked some more hazelnut flavor in the cake itself, maybe from some chopped nuts in the batter, or a thicker layer of filling that included with bigger pieces of nuts. The cake is good, but I wouldn't make it again.
Recipe: "Hazelnut Crumble Cake with Gianduja Icing" from Sweet by Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh.
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