Chocolate Coffee Hazelnut cake
Stella requested this for her 12th birthday, and I had to pull from a few different recipes. I used one of the chocolate cake recipes from this blog (not sure which one), and then made a coffee buttercream with toasted hazelnuts. I bought a package of whole, raw hazelnuts and toasted them in the oven for about 10 minutes. If you put them in a tea towel and rub them a bit, the skins should fall off, but only about 20% of them did, but it didn't make a difference with anything. Between each layer of chocolate cake I put some coffee syrup (see recipe below), some chopped hazelnuts, and a layer of buttercream. It was really good and had great coffee flavor. It could have used a bit more buttercream, so I would probably add another 1/2 stick next time. Coffee Syrup 1/4 C hot water 2 TBS instant espresso 1 TBS sugar Coffee buttercream 2 sticks of butter, softened 2 C powdered sugar 1/2 tsp vanilla 1 TBS instant espresso dissolved in 1 TBS hot water