Nut Cake with personality(ies)

I was busy with cake making these days and getting to fulfill everyone’s desire. It’s not easy to get teenagers to love your homemade cake when you're trying to make it good, tasty yet not over the top loaded with sugar, white flour, butter and all these "dangerous" ingredients,... plus to have some thematic persons/personality.

So here is my own recipe, for everyone’s taste (I hope) and it can be used these days to surprise your loved ones, it's fast and easy to make:

Nut-Debate Cake

Batter:

1 jar of hazelnut butter (or finely ground roasted hazelnuts – 250g)

5 egg whites

3 tbsp sugar

Fill 1:

1 vanilla pudding

250ml milk

3 tsp sugar

¼ tsp vanilla essence

3 tbsp butter

Fill 2:

1 Almond pudding

250ml milk

3 tsp sugar

¼ tsp Real Almond aroma

3 tbsp butter

50gr chopped marzipan

50g chopped roasted hazelnuts

50g chopped roasted walnuts

50 g chopped orange peel (optional)

50g chopped dark chocolate

100g melted chocolate for toping

For the marzipan figurines: 250g of soft marzipan, natural food coloring

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Bake cake batter:

Whip egg whites, add sugar, mix than carefully in hazelnut butter and incorporate into the mass. Bake in a small oiled cake pan (~20cm diameter), so that you can get three layers from it. Bake on 180C for about ½ hour (check after 20 minutes by inserting toothpick into the middle of the cake, if it comes out clean is ready). Leave it to completely cool and cut horizontally into three equal parts.

Pudding fillings:

Cook separately milks for both puddings according to instructions, but instead of 0.5 l of milk use only 0.25l for each pudding. After cooking puddings with milk and sugars, add essences and leave it to cool. Then add butter and whip until you get fine cream. If needed, add more icing sugar into puddings to make it sweeter.

In a small pot, melt chocolate with little bit of milk, to make it smooth for the cake cover.

Cake assembling:

Put first layer of the cake on your cake plate. Spread good amount of chopped chocolate and marzipan. Spread vanilla pudding mix on top of that. Press over second cake layer and top it with chopped hazelnuts and orange peel (optional), spread almond pudding over. Cover with third cake layer and press. Cover with melted chocolate and make sure that all cake is equally covered. Refrigerate.

Make figurines from a soft marzipan:

250g of marzipan is enough to make four figures that I did. Split mass in four, if you make four figures etc.. To color them, put few drops of food color on each piece of marzipan and mix between your fingers until color is equal everywhere. Than shape figures between your palms, start first with a body of each figure and then attach legs and arms, head at the end. That way you’ll get a filling how much of the marzipan mass you need for each part. Happy sculpturing!

(My theme was “Debate” since my daughter is debate lover and champion. So I added few “marzipan” tables, trophy etc.. You can make figures for your themes; marzipan is so easy to shape. This was my first usage of marzipan for 3d figures and I really enjoyed it working with it. It’s also so fast!)