[Inez] Hazelnut cake: Take 1

Remember that thing where I'm making a wedding cake in TWO MONTHS? Still in the recipe testing phase. I am trying to figure out how to modify a well-loved recipe to make it into a hazelnut cake that has a strong hazelnut flavor (without being overpowering) and it also light and fluffy with a good crumb that doesn't try to fall apart when I tort it for the wedding.

How much do I need? Not really sure...

This was Take One. I made a chocolate-hazelnut cake once before, which turned out well...

Toasted hazelnuts

I toasted and then ground hazelnuts and threw those in with the dry ingredients instead of the cocoa. Note: 1 1/2 cups of whole hazelnuts makes more than I need for a double layer 9-inch cake.

I used about a cup or a cup and a half (can't remember right now) in the cake, had an extra 1/3-1/2 ground and an extra 1/3 whole.

I didn't take any assembly pictures, but I have a couple of notes:

1. Doing a crumb coat the real way, wherein you apply a crumb coat and then put the thing in the fridge for 15 minutes is excellent and I highly recommend it.
2. Do NOT overwhip the whipping cream to fold into cream cheese frosting. It will make the frosting too stiff and difficult to work with. It turned out well, but took a lot of cursing to get there.

I got these pretty silver decorative things in Brazil last spring, and they seemed appropriate for this cake:

No recipe on this post. I'm going to play with it some more this weekend and I will post a recipe when I have figured it out!


Update: I made a few tweaks this past weekend, but I'm still not quite there. Getting closer, though!

[Inez] Tiered coconut cake

I may have mentioned that I'm going to be making my dear friend Steph's wedding cake this June. The plan is a three tier cake (12 inch, 9 inch, 6 inch) with layers in chocolate, hazelnut, and vanilla. The hazelnut is for Steph, the chocolate is because it's damn delicious, and the vanilla is for weirdos who don't like chocolate and/or are allergic to tree nuts. Okay, there's nothing weird about being allergic to tree nuts, I just don't know why you would pick vanilla over chocolate in that situation.

Anyway, my moms gave me a frosting decorating tip set for Christmas, which I will be needing to use for between the tiers on the wedding cake. Ruby came to visit (so long ago, now...) and we made a coconut cake in differently sized tiers and then we played around with the icing bag thingy.

This is not what the wedding cake will look like. There won't be any coconut shavings and there won't be any pink and that whole side won't be drooping.... but this was fun to put together and delicious to make. Coconut cake. Did you know it's one of the best things ever?

P.S. Sorry for the crappy nighttime pictures. If I don't take pictures at night I will never take pictures again, it seems.