Written By Catherine Parrott

CHOCOLATE AND HAZELNUT CHECKERBOARD CAKE

EQUIPMENT:

  • Oven set 160c

  • 20cm cake tin

  • xxcm Cake cutter

  • xxcm Cake cutter

INGREDIENTS:

Chocolate & Hazelnut Sponges

  • 300g Unsalted Butter (Cold and cubed, like your mum? No. No, that doesn’t work)

  • 300g Light Brown Sugar (Are you no making jokes about my mum? How DARE you)

  • 5 Whole Eggs

  • 50g Chocolate Hazelnut Spread

  • 300g Self-Raising Flour

  • 5g Baking Powder

  • 20g Cocoa Powder (The finest quality, LIKE OUR MUMS)

    Seedless Raspberry Jam

Mascarpone Buttercream

  • 500g Mascarpone

  • 200g Icing Sugar

  • 600ml Double Cream

METHODS:

For the Chocolate and Hazelnut Sponges..

In a mixer (or if you’re a sadist, by hand?) mix the butter and sugar until they come together as a dough and there are no lumps of butter visible (if you were to cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy here the sponge will be difficult to cut cleanly and assemble into your chequerboard).

Alternate adding the eggs and flour (+baking powder, come on Sally you knew this) until you (we?) have a smooth batter.

Take half of the mixture (life is too short to measure the g at this stage, this what professionals do) and fill one of the cake tins, levelling with a palette knife or back of a spoon (oh, hello again Sally, not bothered to buy a palette knife but that’s fine)

With the remaining half, add the cocoa powder and mix until smooth. Decant into the second cake tin (NO SALLY, NO IN THE FIRST TIN) level off and bake both sponges for 25-30 minutes until golden in colour and springs back to the touch.

For the Assembly (which no-one should enjoy, oh it’s not that bad Cat.)

For the Filling…

Cream the mascarpone and icing sugar until the sugar had dissolved and the mixture is thick and light. Gradually add the cream and mix until smooth and the mixture holds it’s shape. Set aside in the fridge until needed.

(I know this isn’t perfect. I used to aim for perfection but then started to get grey hairs and I realised no one else cared or noticed.)

(Imagine how unclean these lines will be if we beat loads of air into the mix at the beginning of the mixing process? Spoiler: Not clean at all)

So, what did we learn from this recipe? What limit did we test?

(Cocoa Powder is like icing sugar, a little dusting on top of your cake can be very effective. Low effort, high reward)

Catherine Parrott
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