Chocolate Coffee Hazelnut cake

By Stef -

 


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

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