Chocolate hazelnut cake

with a soft brownie, a creamy hazelnut cream, a crispy hazelnut meringue and a chocolate glaze

Author: Lena

Preheat the oven to 95 degrees Celsius or 203 degrees Fahrenheit. Start to whip the egg whites with a pinch of salt at medium speed. Add the sugar, vanilla sugar and lemon juice slowly in several parts. Then you can set the mixer to full speed and beat everything for 10 minutes. When the mixture has a firm consistency and it doesn't disintegrates anymore, you can fold in the chopped hazelnuts and pour everything into a icing bag with a large round
opening. Make two circles with the piping bag, with the same diameter as the cake (in this case 22 cm).
The Meringue circles need to dry in the oven for 1. 5 to 3 hours (depending on the time available) until they are hard and crispy inside.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius or 356 degrees Fahrenheit.
Lightly grease a cake tin with the diameter of 22 cm with softened butter.
Melt the butter with the sugar in a water bath until the sugar crystals have dissolved. Then add all the other ingredients and stir briefly; only until everything has mixed well. Pour the dough into the cake tin and bake for 30 minutes.

Place the hazelnuts in the oven together with the brownie batter and roast them for 7 minutes to brown them slightly and give them an aromatic taste.
In a pot boil the water with the sugar at 120 degrees Celcius or 250 degrees Fahrenheit and then add the warm nuts and the salt. Let everything caramelise for 10 minutes on medium heat, stirring constantly, until the sugar mass turns brown and sticks to the nuts. Then turn off the heat and add the butter.
Pour the mixture into a strong mixer and mix everything for 3 - 5 minutes until a creamy paste is formed. Don't forget to always clean the edges of the mixer from the mixture and to add it back to the cutting knife so that everything becomes creamy.

For the butter cream, lightly whip all the egg yolks with the vanilla sugar. Meanwhile, boil 120g sugar with 30g water to a sugar sirup. Slowly let the sugar water flow in a thread into the egg mass at high speed of the stirring machine you and let everything beat frothy for 10 minutes until it has cooled down. Add the soft butter and the hazelnut praliné and beat until it gets a smooth mixture. Put the butter cream aside for a moment.
Prepare an Italian meringue for the butter cream: Boil 100g sugar with 30g water to a sugar sirup, in the mean time whip the egg whites with a ½ tsp lemon juice in the stirring machine at high speed. Add the sugar sirup slowly in a thread and beat the mixture until it cooled down and it does not collapse anymore.
Take the butter cream and carefully fold the Italian meringue in three parts into it.

Put a bowl with cream and chocolate chopped in pieces for 3 minutes in the microwave or in a water bath until the chocolate is melted. Stir everything well into a creamy glaze.

Cut the chocolate cake in half to have two thinner chocolate cakes.
Start to layer everything: first a brownie cake, then spread a small part of the butter cream over it, put a meringue on it, spread again some cream over and repeat this whole step again. Put some cream on top of the cake and spread it flat. Coat the sides of the cake with the rest of the cream (possibly leave some cream for the decoration too), fill the holes and smooth everything with a flat palette.
Spread the cold chocolate galze on the cake, smooth it down nicely and let it run down the edges with a spoon to form drops.
For garnishing the cake, fill the rest of the butter cream in a icing bag with a star-shaped spout and make some flowers with it on the top. Decorate it with halved hazelnuts and grated dark chocolate.