Torta alla Gianduia

I love Nutella. I love it so much I eat it directly from the jar with a tablespoon. When I first saw this recipe, my first thought was, "What a waste of good Nutella!". The whole jar that goes into this cake would have given me many many spoonfuls of pure gourmandise. I don't think I was ever such a Nutella fanatic until I came to France. It's on crêpes, waffles, donuts, chichis, not to mention it goes wonderfully with brioche, this stuff is addictive. Nutella cake was too tempting to resist.

Torta alla gianduia
from How To Be A Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson

For the cake:
6 large eggs, separated
pinch of salt
125 g soft unsalted butter
400 g Nutella
1 tablespoon Frangelico, rum or water
100 g ground hazelnuts
100 g dark chocolate, melted

For the icing:
100 g hazelnuts (peeled weight)
125 ml double cream
1 tablespoon Frangelico, rum or water
125 g dark chocolate

Preheat the oven to 180 °C.

In a large bowl, whisk the egg whites and salt until stiff but not dry. In a separate bowl, beat the butter and Nutella together, and then add the Frangelico, egg yolks and ground hazelnuts. Fold in the cooled, melted chocolate, then lighten the mixture with a large dollop of egg white, which you can beat in as roughly as you want, before gently folding the rest of them in a third at a time. Pour into a 23 cm greased and lined Springform tin and cook for 40 minutes or until the cake's beginning to come away at the sides, then let cool on a rack.

Toast the hazelnuts in a dry frying pan until the aroma wafts upwards and the nuts are golden-brown in parts: keep shaking the pan so that they don't burn on one side and stay too pallid on others. Transfer to a plate and let cool. This is imperative: if they go on the ganache while hot, it'll turn oily.

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, add the cream, liquer and chopped chocolate, and heat gently. Once the chocolate's melted, take the pan off the heat and whisk until it reaches the right consistency to ice the top of the cake. Unmould the cooled cake carefully, ice the top with the chocolate icing, and dot thickly with the whole toasted hazelnuts.