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Heavenly Frangelico Cake

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A hazelnut torte made with Frangelico liqueur layered with raspberry jam and chocolate butter ‘cream’ and decorated with a halo of toffee shards, hazelnut praline, crystallised flowers, all drizzled with chocolate.  Positively sinful!

Ingredients:

  • 1 1/2 cups plain flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 1/2 cups (150g) processed Hazelnuts
  • 125g Western Star Salt Reduced Butter, softened
  • 1 1/2 cups castor sugar
  • 4, 60g egg whites, stiffly beaten
  • 1/4 cup Frangelico mixed with 1/2 cup water
  • 3 extra tablespoons Frangelico
  • 3 tablespoons good raspberry jam
  • 40g dark chocolate

Chocolate Butter Cream

  • 375g Western Star Salt Reduced Butter
  • 1 cup castor sugar
  • 3/4 cup water
  • 4, 60g egg yolks
  • 60g dark chocolate, chopped
  • 1 tablespoon Crème de Cacao

Hazelnut Praline

  • 1/2cup hazelnuts
  • 3/4 cup castor sugar

Toffee Chards

  • 1/2 cup raw sugar
  • 1/2 cup castor sugar
  • 1 tablespoon coffee crystals

Crystallised Flowers

  • 1 handful edible flowers like violets, pansies and borage
  • 1 medium egg white, lightly beaten until frothy
  • 1 cup castor sugar

Method:

Preheat oven to 190°C.  Butter and line bases of 2 x 20cm springform pans with baking paper.

Cream butter and sugar in a bowl for 5 minutes until light and creamy.

Sift flour and baking powder together and add ground hazelnuts. Alternately fold in flour and Frangelico water into creamed butter.

Add 1 large spoonful of the beaten egg whites into mixture to lighten then fold in the rest of the egg whites.

Pour into prepared pans.  Bake in preheated oven for 20-25 minutes until firm and springy to touch.

Cool in pans for 10 minutes before carefully turning onto wire racks.

Chocolate Butter Cream

Beat butter in a bowl until light and creamy.  Stir sugar and water over heat in small saucepan until all the sugar is dissolved.  Boil the sugar syrup for 3 minutes.

Beat egg yolks.  Gradually add the hot sugar syrup while still beating egg yolks.  Continue to beat for 15 minutes until the egg mixture is thick and old.

Add egg mixture to the creamed butter.

Place chocolate in a small bowl, melt in microwave.  Add crème de cacao to melted chocolate.  Stir in butter mixture.  Set aside until required.

Hazelnut Praline

Preheat oven to 180ºC.  Roast hazelnuts on oven tray for 10-15 minutes until skins rub off inside a tea towel.

Put sugar in small saucepan and heat until sugar melts to a pale tea coloured toffee.  Add toasted nuts and pour toffee onto buttered oven tray to harden. 

Once cold either use processor to make praline or put toffee inside plastic bag and hit with a rolling pin.  Store in airtight container.

Toffee Chards

Combine sugars and place on lightly buttered foil lining grill tray.

Place under low-moderate griller to melt.

Cool ‘pane’ of toffee glass and store on foil sheet in air tight container until required.

Crystallised Flowers

Make sure flowers are clean and dry. Using a small paint brush paint petals with frothy egg white, dredge with sugar and place on baking paper on oven tray.

Repeat until flowers are all done.

Heat oven on very low. Place oven tray in middle and ‘cook’ flowers until the flowers are dry, about 6 hours.  When cool, carefully store in airtight container.

To assemble the cake:

Split the two cold cakes in half.

Place the first layer of cake on serving platter.  Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon Frangelico, spread raspberry jam over cake and chocolate butter cream on top.  Repeat 2 more times and place last cake layer on top.

Cover top and sides of cake with remainder of chocolate butter cream.

Carefully remove foil from toffee glass and break into shards.  Make a spiky halo of shards on top of the cake.  Sprinkle the hazelnut praline around the shards.

Scatter the crystallised flowers wherever they look pretty.

Melt the 40g of dark chocolate and make a disposable baking paper icing tube.

Cut off the tip with scissors and randomly drizzle the cake with melted chocolate.

Hints:

It may seem to be a lot of work but the praline, sugar shards and flowers can all be made well in advance. Making the cake and the butter is not too difficult and putting it all together is fun and when complete gives a very pretty, totally yummy cake. Just relax and have fun, it'll be fine!