Chocolate Cake, Chocolate Cake Have You Any Nuts?

Today I stayed home, as my migraine decided to give me even a harder time, than last three days. So as I’ve been laying around and focusing on napping and not-doing-much, a strong almost desperate need to bake something yummy came to me. And I’m not sure if it was because of my headache or the fact that I’ve been watching some cooking programs, but I started to think about new recipe.  On the kitchen windowstill, I saw those goodies:

These are hazel nuts from our garden, freshly collected as my mom doesn’t want to feed them all to squirrels. After a longer search through the cupboards I found as well a can of fudge, 200g of 70% dark chocolate and 1/4 box of the cocoa. So the idea started to create. I wanted something decadent and rich. Full of round tastes, sweetness of the fudge and earthy tones of nuts and dark chocolate.

I peeled the fresh nuts and gave them a quick roast. The nice, earthy and autumny scent of roasted nuts filled the whole house. I started to think about the fall and its tastes. When the cold season comes, we start to crave all hearty meals. Chocolate, nuts and fudge seem to be a saviour and soul food.

As I started with the recipe, I knew I needed a fluffy but still strudy cake that would grow nicely and support the nuts and fudge. I was quite mesmerized by the idea of fudge keeping it’s nice, rather liquidy consistence, but was sligghtly worried that a dough might absorb the fudginess. Thankfully the recipe worked better than I hoped it would.

Squirrel Cake Sans Squirrel

200g fresh hazel nuts peeled and roasted

300g flour

4 eggs

3 tb spoonfuls of butter/margarine

150g sugar

1 vanilla sugar

2 tea spoons baking powder

1 small cup espresso (about 150-200 ml)

2-3 tb spoons cocoa powder

1 can fudge (about 500g)

200g dark chocolate (70% cocoa)

Beat together eggs, butter, sugar, vanilla sugar, cocoa until nice and creamy. Add flour and baking powder and beat in well. Pour in hot espresso, beat in well. Add chopped chocolate. In the rectangular tray lined with parchment paper, place 1/2 of the batter, on the top place coaresly chopped roasted nuts, on that evenly spread fudge and the rest of the batter. Smooth all nicely. Put into the oven preheated to 200C (if you’re using convection oven then 180C) and bake for about 45mins – but be sure to make the toothpick check