Here’s a little gift for those who love chocolate cake. The recipe is made with a huge amount of chocolate and it has a fence-like decoration, which makes it look really fancy.
Ingredients
For the base
200 g hazelnuts
100 g vanilla biscuits
A bar of Milka chocolate (as 80-100 g)
100 g butter
For the cream
4 eggs
500 g mascarpone
4 tablespoons sugar
1 package vanilla sugar
400 ml whipping cream
3 good quality chocolate bars (for example a dairy, a coffee and a dark chocolate)
1 package gelatin
For the decoration
You may use biscuit sticks covered in Milka chocolate, wafers (these may become soggy, however), or cinnamon bars (the advantage is that they look good, the disadvantage is that they can’t be eaten) – the photos show all three types of decoration. On the top of the cake you can shape a letter out of caramelized hazelnuts or coffee beans.
- Roast the hazelnuts on low heat in a dry frying pan until they turn dark, but not burned. After they cool off, grind them along with the biscuits and mix them together. Melt the butter with 100 g chocolate and mix them well with the hazelnut-biscuit mixture. Move this base into a 26 cm diameter round cake pan and smooth it down. Store it in the refrigerator for an hour.
- Dissolve the gelatin in 60-70 ml cold water and set it aside for 10 minutes. Place the dish containing the gelatin into a bowl of very hot water; the gelatin will turn into a thick, yellowish, dense liquid. Take the dish out from the hot bath and allow the gelatin to cool.
- Place the three chocolate bars into a dish and melt them over steam. Stir the chocolate from time to time.
- Mix the yolks with the sugar and the vanilla sugar until the crystals melt and you obtain a frothy cream; add the mascarpone and the melted chocolate, and finally add the whisked egg white and the whipped cream. After you have carefully mixed the above ingredients, stir in the gelatin as well, making sure that it has already cooled to room temperature.
- Pour half of the cream into the cake pan. Place the biscuit/waffle/cinnamon sticks side by side around the cake to create a fence, and then pour in the rest of the cream.
- Refrigerate the cake overnight. If you are using caramelized hazelnuts or coffee beans to decorate the cake, make sure you add them just before serving; otherwise the caramel will melt before the slices of cake will end up on plates.