Bill’s Ricotta Hotcakes
September 25, 2008 at 1:55 pm | Posted in breakfast things, pancakes/waffles | 14 Comments
Pancakes, hotcakes, flapjacks, griddlecakes…whatever you’re callin’ ’em, I’m lovin’ ’em! Without a doubt, they are my favorite breakfast. In theory, I relish the idea of ordering pancakes in a café: letting someone else do the work for me while I rub my eyes and sip cappuccino. It’s not so much the cooking itself, but the thought of all that washing up afterwards (and in the morning!) that bores me to tears. In practice, though, I make them at home quite often, because the restaurant ones are so often heavy, dense and disappointing.
Of course, if you look around enough, you can find restaurant pancake excellence, and in Sydney my gold star goes to Bill Granger’s ricotta hotcakes. There are three bills restaurants here in the Big Smoke and, although I’m partial to the Woollahra branch, they all serve the same delicious hotcakes. So light, thanks to the creamy ricotta and meringue folded into the batter, they are like little puddingy, syrup-drenched souffles. Luckily, Bill doesn’t keep his recipes secret, and since I have his cookbook bills Sydney Food, I’ll be able to make these myself when I am no longer living such a short drive from pancake bliss.
If you have an Italian or gourmet store that sells fresh ricotta in the deli case, do yourself a favor and buy a little tub of that. I hadn’t tried fresh ricotta myself until a few months ago, and couldn’t believe the taste and texture–so much better than the prepacked, mass produced stuff. And, at least where I normally shop (at Norton St. Grocer, but I see it all over the place), it’s less expensive and I can just buy what I need. Low fat is what I get, and it works great here.
I made half of the recipe below, and it turned out four small-to-medium cakes each (there are two of us). It looked like I had a big plate, but all I was left with was this…
Bill’s Ricotta Hotcakes– serves 4-5
adapted from bills Sydney Food by Bill Granger
Note: Hotcake batter can be stored for up to 24 hours, covered with plastic wrap in the refrigerator.
1 1/3 c ricotta
3/4 c milk
4 eggs, separated
1 c AP flour
1 t baking powder
a pinch of cinnamon (optional)
a pinch of salt
butter for the pan or griddle
-Place ricotta, milk and egg yolks in a bowl and combine.
-Sift the flour, baking powder and salt (and cinnamon, if using) into a bowl. Add to the ricotta mixture and mix until just combined.
-Place egg whites in a clean dry bowl and beat until stiff peaks form. With a large metal spoon, fold the meringue through batter in two batches.
-Heat a large non-stick frying pan, cast iron skillet or griddle over medium heat. Lightly grease with butter (I like to lightly spray mine first, then butter) and drop two tablespoons of batter per hotcake. Don’t cook more than three per batch. Cook over a low to medium heat for two minutes, or until hotcakes have golden undersides. Turn hotcakes and cook on the other side until golden and cooked through.
-Transfer to a plate. Dust with icing sugar and serve with fresh fruit and maple syrup.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Dimply Peach Cake
September 23, 2008 at 5:49 am | Posted in breakfast things, cakes & tortes, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 49 Comments
Michelle of Bake-En selected Dorie’s Dimply Plum Cake for this week’s TWD. I’ve read about this little breakfast cake all over the place, so I was really looking forward to trying it. Unfortunately, stone fruits are not in season just yet here in Australia. I had to take what I could get on this one, and what I could get were a couple of rock-hard peaches. I stuck ’em in a paper bag and crossed my fingers that they’d ripen after a few days.
Well, they didn’t really ripen at all, and frankly I was surprised that I could even get the pits out, but I charged ahead with my out of season fruit anyway. I went with one of Dorie’s “playing around” suggestions and added a few shredded basil leaves instead of citrus zest to the cake batter. I kept in the cardamom, which is a spice I love, and added a pinch of cinnamon, too. To try and help the crunchy peaches along a bit, I sprinkled each exposed half with sugar just before putting the cake in the oven, and then a couple more times during the baking process as well.
Such a cute cake– I loved the fruity dimples, and the peach halves looked almost like hearts! What I’ve hidden from you in these photos, though, is a little patch of raw batter left under each peach half. Drat– I couldn’t get that part to cook through for the life of me! In a flash of genius while taking these photos, I thought that if I flipped the individual slices upside-down on a baking sheet and stuck them under the broiler for a minute, I cook get the raw bits to firm up. And it worked! (That technique might get a little messy with a whole large cake.) There was no time to take extra pics, however, as the coffee was good to go, and R was grumbling that breakfast was already taking too long.
I made half a recipe and baked it in a standard-sized loaf pan. Leftovers weren’t a problem, as R and I polished off the whole thing in one sitting! The peaches did sweeten and soften nicely in the oven (I do think the sugar sprinklings helped), and I loved the warm, spicy cardamom flavor. Although R was initially suspicious, the basil was a really nice touch, too…I should bake with herbs more often.
For the recipe, look in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan (she also has it on Serious Eats) or read Bake-En. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll to see what over 250 other people had to say!
Tuesdays with Dorie: Chocolate Chunkers
September 16, 2008 at 4:15 am | Posted in cookies & bars, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 54 Comments
Just reading the recipe for this cookie is enough to make you grab a tube of Clearasil and apply a proactive smear all over your face. You may initially feel relief upon only seeing 3 tablespoons of butter, but look a little closer, and you’ll see 1+(6×3)=19…19 ounces of chocolate! This cookie is basically bits of chocolate held together with a smidge of brownie batter. Before you think I’m poo-pooing the Chocolate Chunkers (did someone say poo-poo? hmmm…I won’t go any further, but I think you know what I mean), let me make it clear that they are insanely good! Thanks to Claudia of Fool for Food for picking it for TWD this week! And a special shout-out to Mari…I did totally copycat you with the cooling rack thing (although yours is cuter!). What can I say? I am out of ideas for cookie photography at this point.
This recipe is easily divides in half, but I toughed out the math to cut it down to just a third. I didn’t want to blow my whole chocolate stash in one swoop. Dorie notes that good chocolate is a must here, and she ain’t kidding. For the label-curious, I used cocoa powder by Valrhona, bittersweet by Scharffen Berger, unsweetened (well, really 85%) by Lindt, milk by Green & Black’s and white by Belcolade. Semisweet was also in the recipe, but I don’t have any, so I used a bittersweet/milk combo instead. It’s not all chocolate in here, though…there are nuts and dried fruit going on, too. I decided to toss in coconut flakes rather than raisins, which I don’t like, and toasted almonds. The whole thing was deliciuosly Almond Joy-esq.
A couple of observations…if you chill this dough, it becomes rock-hard! For easier shaping, and the well-being of your cookie scoop, you may want to let it come to room temp before digging into it. Also, my cookies didn’t want to flatten at all in the oven, so at the half-way point I helped them out by giving them a gentle smoosh with a silicone spatula.
Look in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or read Claudia’s post to find the recipe. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll to see what over 250 other people had to say!
P.S.: This week I’m Port Douglas, Queensland. I know, I know…I’ve been travelling a lot lately. Back over the weekend!
Vanilla Malted Ice Cream
September 10, 2008 at 6:33 pm | Posted in ice creams & frozen, sweet things | 29 Comments
You know the ice cream from my last post? Well, I did say I’d type up the recipe for you, and I do not fib (at least not often, and when I do, I usually get caught).
Making up your own ice cream flavors isn’t hard. Here, I pretty much just futzed around with a standard formula for vanilla ice cream that I often use, but the idea to add skim milk powder to the base and the technique of cooking it over a double boiler (no tempering that way) came from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy. (By the way, if you haven’t tried the Brown Sugar Vanilla Ice Cream from her book, it is most excellent.)
After the cookies were polished off, R and I enjoyed the ice cream in sundae form! With chocolate sauce, it was truly spectacular (the sauce was leftover from the DB’s eclair challenge, but I’ll list that recipe below as well, just in case you want it). I’m imagining it would have made a damn good malted milkshake, too, but the ice cream is just a sweet memory now…
Vanilla Malted Ice Cream- makes about 1 quart
1½ c cream
1½ c milk
½ c vanilla sugar (or ½ c granulated sugar + ½ vanilla bean, split and scraped)
1/8 t salt
1/4 c skim milk powder
2 T barley malt syrup
4 egg yolks
½ t vanilla extract
about 1/8 t xanthan gum (optional; helps keep ice cream scoopable)
-Set yourself up with a double boiler: Put a few inches of water into a large, heavy saucepot and bring to a simmer. Find a heatproof bowl both big enough to hold the above ingredients and big enough to sit over the pot without touching the simmering water.
-In the bowl, thoroughly combine the cream, milk, vanilla sugar, salt, skim milk powder, malt syrup and egg yolks with a whisk.
-Set the bowl over the simmering water and stir the mixture constantly until it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon and reaches 180°-185°F (this takes 5-10 minutes). You may need to adjust the heat to keep the water at a simmer.
-Take the bowl off the heat and whisk in vanilla extract and xanthan gum (if using). Now is also a good time to taste the base…if it’s not malty enough for you, add in another tablespoon of syrup.
-Strain the base into a clean storage container or large glass measuring cup. Cool over an ice bath. Refrigerate several hours or overnight.
-Pour the chilled base into your ice cream maker and freeze.
-Transfer to a resealable container and place in the freezer until firm enough to scoop.
Chocolate Sauce- makes 1½ cups or 525 g
from Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Hermé
4½ oz (130 g) bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 c (250 g) water
½ c (125 g) heavy cream (or crème fraîche)
1/3 c (70 g) sugar
-Place all the ingredients into a heavy‐bottomed saucepan and bring to a boil, making sure to whisk constantly. Then reduce the heat to low and continue whisking until the sauce thickens.
-It may take 10‐15 minutes for the sauce to thicken, but you will know when it is done when it coats the back of a spoon.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Chocolate Malted Whopper Drops
September 9, 2008 at 5:20 am | Posted in cookies & bars, events, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 63 Comments
We had a great week in New Zealand…the South Island is so beautiful, with so many different landscapes, it almost doesn’t look real in some places. And the baby sheep (otherwise known as lambs, I guess)–heart-meltingly cute! Lots of good food and vino, too (so much that, even though we brought back several bottles of wine, I am on the wagon for the next couple weeks). Should you ever go to Christchurch, do yourself a favor and check out Restaurant Schwass. Same goes for Gibb’s Vineyard Restaurant in Blenheim in the Marlborough wine region.
Enough rambling–on to the cookies! Chocolate Malted Whopper Drops are the TWD choice of Rachel from Confessions of a Tangerine Tart. These cookies are really Maltesers drops, the brand of malt ball sold here. A lot of people say they are better than Whoppers, but I haven’t had a Whopper in a very long time, so I can neither confirm nor deny this. (If you live in Brooklyn, though, the dark chocolate espresso malt balls sold at Two For the Pot on Clinton Street are most definitely the best ever!) I was pleased to notice a dark version of Maltesers, and that’s what I used here.
I, of course, only made half a batch of cookies, and they were a bit of a test-kitchen experiment for me. I don’t have any malted milk powder, and I wasn’t about to buy a big canister of Milo or Ovaltine just to make cookies. I do, though, have barley malt syrup and powdered milk, so for my half-batch I used 1/2 cup of powdered milk and 2 teaspoons of malt syrup in place of the malt powder. Luckily, they were not a total mess! Malt syrup is strong stuff, and the flavor here is definitely noticeable. I did do something that some may consider a sin–I cut back the amount of chopped malt balls and chocolate chunks (for which I used white instead of dark) by about 25%. It was still plenty, trust me, but I guess that’s why I don’t see as many chunky bits on the surface of mine as in Dorie’s book picture.
The first night, we ate them straight up, and they were so soft and chewy that R commented that they would be the perfect ice cream sandwich cookie. Well, I can’t ignore a comment like that, so the next day I made a batch of vanilla malted ice cream. He was right–they were great, albeit a little drippy.
Look in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or read Confessions of a Tangerine Tart to find the recipe. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll to see what over 250 other people had to say!
Tuesdays with Dorie: Chunky Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Chocolate Chipsters
September 2, 2008 at 4:09 am | Posted in cookies & bars, events, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 43 Comments
This week for TWD, Stefany of Proceed with Caution chose these Chunky Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Chocolate Chipsters. They combine the best bits of all my favorite cookies, and even have a little spice in there, too!
Since more cookies are on the baking horizon, I made just a quarter recipe. I have a lot of half-used bits of chocolate floating around, so I put milk chocolate chunks instead of bittersweet in these, purely for the satisfaction of finishing off a bar.
They came out great, thankfully. Anytime I have to bake with my precious stash of Jif (which I bring back on trips the States), I sweat a little that the recipe will be a bomb. The PB is subtle in flavor, but the cookies really smell peanuty, and the little bit of cinnamon and nutmeg gives them a warm flavor. I baked mine on the low end of the recommended time, so they’d stay a little soft, which is how I prefer a chocolate chip cookie to be. Dorie notes that these are great cookies to make ice cream sandwiches with. I totally bet she’s right, but I didn’t have the stomach (or maybe too much of the stomach is really my problem) to try that out!
I’m actually in New Zealand for most of the week and may not be able to go through the TWD Blogroll myself, but you should definitely check it out! And look in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or read Proceed with Caution to find the recipe for these cookies.
Daring Bakers in August: Pierre Hermé’s Chocolate Éclairs
August 31, 2008 at 4:25 am | Posted in daring bakers, groups, other sweet, sweet things | 63 Comments
Éclairs may be my husband’s favorite pastry. He blames a box of éclairs that I made and brought home while in cooking school for sending him on a downward sweets spiral that resulted in him being on a diet for like two years after my graduation! I blame his lack of self-control. Let’s see if he can keep it together for this month’s Daring Bakers event– Meeta from What’s For Lunch, Honey? and Tony of Olive Juice have challenged us to make éclairs. Not just any éclairs, but Pierre Hermé’s éclairs.
Éclairs are made from choux pastry, usually filled with pastry cream and dipped in chocolate. They’re just like a cream puff, but elongated instead of round. Meeta and Tony wanted us to keep either the glaze or the pastry cream chocolate, but gave us free reign to make one of them non-chocolate. I kept the chocolate on top and filled mine with a coffee-wattleseed pastry cream.
It wasn’t until I took that top picture, that I noticed that from the side, my éclair looked a little weird. “What’s with this thing?” I thought. I usually prefer not to cut éclairs in half in order to fill them. Looks-wise, I like them better when they are kept intact and filled through a small hole in the back or on the bottom. But I was fast running out of daylight for my photos, so I figured I’d cut them in half to cool quicker and just assemble and photograph one right away. Upon closer inspection, I realized that rather than filling the bottom half of the éclair I photoed with pastry cream, I’d filled the top half of another one, and then sandwiched the two together. D’oh! I thought about a redo but then I decided to leave it, so you can have a glimpse of what it’s like to be me, the master (or mistress, I guess) of imperfection.
I made Dorie’s pâte à choux not too long ago, and I think I preferred it. The ingredients aren’t too different, although this one from Hermé has an additional egg. Perhaps that’s why it seemd a little crustier than I’m used to. I also had to bake it a bit longer than the recommended 20 minutes to dry it out and get it the shade of brown I like. I do love the chocolate sauce, though. It is delicious, and luckily I have a bunch left over..it will be great on ice cream.
Check out the DB blogroll! And visit Meeta or Tony for the recipe (which was adapted from Chocolate Desserts By Pierre Hermé).
Cookie Carnival: Chocolate-Hazelnut Biscotti
August 28, 2008 at 2:24 pm | Posted in cookies & bars, events, sweet things | 15 Comments
Kate over at The Clean Plate Club has come up with a great monthly event–one that combines my love for cookies with my equally passionate love for carnie rides! The price of admission to this month’s Cookie Carnival is a batch of chocolate-hazelnut biscotti. There’s been a lot of chocolate and hazelnut here this month, hasn’t there? Well, that’s OK–it’s one of my favorite combos, so keep it coming!
A café cookie jar staple, we all know biscotti as the crunchy biscuits we dip in our lattes. They are “twice baked” to get that hard crunch…first a large log to set the dough, and then again when that dough is sliced into individual cookies.
Besides the fact that I made just one-quarter of the full recipe, I did substitute white chocolate chunks for the semisweet chips. I figured that since the biscotti have a dark cocoa base, the white chocolate would go nicely. And, as a result of some shopping confusion, I have a giant bag of white chocolate pistoles that I’m itching to use up. A couple of months ago I bought a one kilo bag of the stuff for the DB opera cake. It should have been fairly obvious that there was no way I’d need that much, but for some reason my brain sometimes chooses to sit out the decision-making process..
These biscotti were good. I wasn’t crazy about them when they were fresh put of the oven, but they were much improved after sitting around for a few hours, I thought, and quite perfect when dunked into coffee the next morning. That being said, while I am glad I made them, I probably won’t make them again…but only because there are just too many other cookies out there to try!
Chocolate-Hazelnut Biscotti- makes about 4 dozen
from The Bakehouse in Bloomington, IN (recipe from Bon Appétit)
1 1/2 cups hazelnuts, toasted, husked
3 cups all purpose flour
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 cup semisweet or white chocolate chips or chunks
-Preheat oven to 350°F. Line heavy large baking sheet with parchment paper.
-Grind 1/2 cup toasted hazelnuts in processor. Set aside. Whisk flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt in large bowl.
-Beat butter and sugar in another large bowl to blend. Add eggs and vanilla and almond extracts and beat until well blended. Beat in flour mixture. Mix in 1 cup whole toasted hazelnuts, chocolate chips and 1/2 cup ground hazelnuts.
-Divide dough into 2 equal pieces. Shape each piece on baking sheet into 2 1/2-inch-wide by 14-inch-long log. Place logs on prepared baking sheet, spacing 2 1/2 inches apart (logs will spread during baking). Bake until logs feel firm when tops are gently pressed, about 35 minutes.
-Cool logs on baking sheet 15 minutes. Maintain oven temperature.
-Using long wide spatula, transfer baked logs to cutting board. Using serrated knife, cut warm logs crosswise into 1/2-inch-thick slices.
-Arrange slices, cut side down, on 2 baking sheets. Bake biscotti until firm, about 15 minutes. Transfer to racks and cool completely. (Chocolate-Hazelnut Biscotti can be prepared ahead. Store in airtight container up to 4 days, or wrap in foil and freeze in resealable plastic bags up to 3 weeks.)
Tuesdays with Dorie: Chocolate-Banded Ice Cream Torte
August 26, 2008 at 4:36 am | Posted in groups, ice creams & frozen, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 54 Comments
I’m just going to admit that I almost pooped out on TWD this week. I’ve been feeling a little weighed down lately, ya know, and I wasn’t so sure that something called a “Chocolate-Banded Ice Cream Torte” was really going to help. But then I felt guilty…I haven’t missed a week for no good reason yet, and thought it best not to go down that road. Besides, I didn’t want to let down Amy of Food, Family and Fun, who chose this week’s recipe. The deal I struck with myself was to make just two individual servings– one for R and one for me.
I knew that my solo portions wouldn’t need to be as tall as Dorie’s large torte, so I could get away with less of everything. I made just 1/8 of the ganache recipe (or enough for one Dorie-sized serving), and divvied it up between my two little molds, which were actually sturdy, straight sided muffin wrappers. (FYI: The truffle cream does use raw eggs, so if you are sensitive to that, then you may want to skip this recipe or seek out pasteurized eggs, or do whatever you would normally do in this case.) Dorie uses raspberry-flavored ice cream in her torte, but I can’t say that I’ve ever been a fan of fruit and chocolate combos. Instead, I bought two scoops of condensed milk ice cream from a Sydney shop called Passion Flower, which has lots of cool Asian-inspired flavors (I wasn’t sure how black sesame or taro would pair with chocolate, so I played it safe). Back at home, I ground up some hazelnut praline, leftover from this cake, and stirred that in to the ice cream.
The key to serving a frozen dessert like this is to it pull it out of the freezer and let it temper on the counter a few minutes beforehand. Obviously you don’t want it to start melting, but if the ice cream begins to soften just a tad, it’s much more pleasant to eat and will actually taste better, too.
I’m so glad I pulled my head out from you-know-where and got this one done! It was fantastic, and a bit more classy than the normal mid-week dessert around these parts. The chocolate ganache doesn’t freeze solid, but becomes almost chewy when cold. And I really loved it in combination with the hazelnut praline, which retained its sweet crunch in the ice cream.
Look in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan or read Food, Family and Fun to find the recipe. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll to see what over 250 other people had to say!
Hazelnut Praline Cake
August 22, 2008 at 7:04 pm | Posted in cakes & tortes, events, layer cakes, sweet things | 18 Comments
If you asked me “cake or pie?” I’d yell “cake” every time! That’s why event-mistress-extraordinaire Laurie’s newest play-along, Layers of Cake, sounded right up my alley. In a happy coincidence this month, I knew I would be making a cake for R’s birthday anyway. R picks his own cake every year, and then I whip up his request. A couple weeks ago, when he chose a Hazelnut Praline Cake from a gorgeous book called Crave: A Passion for Chocolate by Australian Maureen McKeon, I momentarily thought I’d landed in Bizarro World– hadn’t I made something sort of like this but a little different last month? No matter, it was his choice after all, and I knew it would be good.
This is not what I would think of as an “American-style” layer cake. It’s a flourless chocolate cake, with ground hazelnuts providing the structure and whipped eggs providing the lift. It has the dense but creamy texture I was expecting and hoping for. The frosting is a milk chocolate whipped ganache (oh my gosh, is it ever good!), and it’s sprinkled with as much homemade hazelnut praline as your heart desires. It’s really rich, but fantastic– definitley fit for a special occasion, and not bad with a nice (giant, as you can see above!) glass of Cookoothama Botrytis Semillon, either.
Hazelnut Praline Cake– makes 10-12 servings
adapted from Maureen McKeon’s Crave: A Passion for Chocolate
Note: I halved this recipe and baked it in two 6-inch rounds. Rather than cutting each round into layers, as the author suggests, I left mine as a two-layer cake.
-Make the hazelnut nut praline (recipe follows) and allow to cool. Then break some into shards to decorate and crush the rest.
-Bake the cake (recipe follows) and allow to cool completely.
-While the cake is baking, make the milk chocolate cream (recipe follows) and chill.
-Slice both of the 9-inch cakes horizontally into two layers, or the 10-inch cake into three layers. (If you halve the recipe, or if your baked cakes are simply thin, use your judgement here to decide if you want to slice them or not.) Put one layer on a cake board and spread with some of the whipped chocolate cream. You may need to dip the your icing spatula into hot water to aid in spreading. Sprinkle with some of the crushed praline, and top with the next cake layer. Repeat until all layers are used.
-Spread the remaining cream on the outside of the cake. Sprinkle with as much crushed praline as you’d like and decorate with the shards.
-Cover lightly and refrigerate until service.
Hazelnut Praline
Note: This may make more than you want to use on the cake. You can adjust the quantities accordingly, but extras save nicely for a couple weeks and can be used crushed over ice cream, etc.
235 g granulated sugar
pinch of salt
250 g skinned hazelnuts, warmed
-Line a baking tray (with sides) with a Silpat or parchment.
-Put the sugar, pinch of salt and 50 ml water into a heavy pot. Stir to combine and clean down and sugar crystals on the sides of the pot with a little water. Bring the sugar to a boil and cook until a light caramel color (do not stir).
-Add the nuts and stir over low heat with a wooden spoon. You will notice the sugar go chalky white, and as you stir it will slowly begin to re-caramelize. Increase the heat at this point and continue to cook until the mixture turns a deep honey color.
-Turn the caramel and nut mixture out onto the lined tray. Pat into a single layer with the back of your wooden spoon. Allow to cool completely, and it will harden.
-Once hard, break into shards or put in plastic bag and crush with a rolling pin.
-Store in an airtight container in a cool, dry place.
Cake
6 large eggs, separated
115 g plus 1 T granulated sugar
pinch of salt
185 g chopped dark chocolate, melted and cooled to tepid
185 g ground hazelnuts
-Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter two 9-inch or one 10-inch round cake pans and line with parchment.
-Using an electric mixer, beat the egg yolks and 115 g sugar on medium-high speed until thick and pale.
-Using clean beaters and bowl, beat the whites with a pinch of salt until soft peaks. Add the 1 T sugar and beat until glossy.
-Mix the tepid chocolate with 3 T hot water and add to the egg yolk mixture. Using a rubber spatula, fold in the ground hazelnuts. Then gently fold in the meringue in two stages.
-Divide the batter among the prepared pans. Bake in the middle of the oven for 30 to 35 minutes (maybe less if you halve the recipe), or until the top is firm to the touch.
-Allow to cool completely in the cake pans before turning out.
Milk Chocolate Cream
375 ml cream (35% fat)
pinch of salt
300 g chopped milk chocolate
60 g unsalted butter
-Bring the cream and pinch of salt to a boil in the saucepan and remove from the heat. Add the chocolate to the hot cream and allow it to stand for a minute or two. Stir until smooth; then stir in the butter. Cover and chill for two hours.
-Use a wooden spoon to beat the chilled ganache mixture until thickened and spreadable.
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