Chocolate Hazelnut Coffee Cake
I hope everyone had a nice weekend!
I was being a summer grinch this weekend and mostly kicked it at home - really having peace and quiet appreciation time (which can be difficult when your backyard faces a country club that insists on blasting every Sean Paul song ever in the entire world - Trump's got weird taste in music).
But sunny deck-days are hard to beat! I recently spruced up the place with some foliage, so I've been spending most of my evenings enjoying my slug-free "garden":
Some gardenia action, future echinacea, got some thai basil and dill working as well.
And a hibiscus, miscellaneous doo-dads, a bitty baby apple tree (it's very bitty, you'll have to squint your eyes to see it), and more of last year's nasturtium!
I'm working on procuring a fiddle leaf fig tree, the biggest elephant ear plant available in the world, and some more fruit/vegetable varieties. My inspiration - Jumanji. I want to be drowning in so many plants I have to use a machete to cut my way to see sunlight.
It's a work in progress.
Anyway, back to what I came here to tell you...
I was inspired by yogurt this weekend and made my favorite (and super easy!) french yogurt cake (with blueberries!) and tried out a new recipe for cinnamon chocolate chip coffee cake (that's what Bon Appetit calls it, but I call it chocolate hazelnut coffee cake because that makes more sense).
Here's my adjusted recipe (basically I just add as much chocolate as I feel is appropriate ~ roughly triple what they tell you to use and same for the cinnamon).
Ingredients:
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup blanched hazelnuts, chopped
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped (I used bittersweet dark chocolate pennies)
1 heaping teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup sugar, divided
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 cup Greek yogurt (B.A. calls for whole, but that's impossible to find, so I just used the readily available 0% fat Greek yogurt)
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350. Spray 8" square baking pan (or I used three small loaf pans to make, well, three small loaves) with non-stick spray. Set aside.
Toss hazelnuts, chocolate, cinnamon, and 1/4 cup sugar in a bowl.
Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl.
In a stand mixer (or with a handheld), beat butter and remaining 3/4 cup sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla and add eggs one at a time, beating to blend between additions and scraping down sides of the bowl, if necessary. With mixer on low speed, add dry ingredients in 3 additions, alternating with yogurt in 2 additions, beginning and ending with dry ingredients.
Pour half of batter into prepared pan and smooth top (wet your finger with water, that helps a lot), top with half of the hazelnut mixture. Spoon remaining batter over and smooth top; top with remaining hazelnut mixture.
Bake until top is golden brown and toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 40-45 minutes.
Since I made three loaves, I kept one out for noshing and stashed the other two in the freezer for a rainy day.
Y'all. I hope you can see the crunch in this situation. It's like eating a million ferrero rocchers for breakfast - or nutella slathered on cinnamon toast crunch. It's just the greatest. The cinnamon sugar and hazelnuts give it an amazing crunch and the yogurt makes the cake super moist.
Check out that swirl of chocolate-hazelnut-y action.
It certainly won't last long, so I hope you're good at squirreling food away. I've currently got a baggie of dark chocolate covered cashews hiding somewhere and a loaf of this coffee cake hidden so deep inside of the freezer, not even the terrifying Arnold Schwarzenegger version of Mr. Freeze could get me to divulge the location of it.
I was being a summer grinch this weekend and mostly kicked it at home - really having peace and quiet appreciation time (which can be difficult when your backyard faces a country club that insists on blasting every Sean Paul song ever in the entire world - Trump's got weird taste in music).
But sunny deck-days are hard to beat! I recently spruced up the place with some foliage, so I've been spending most of my evenings enjoying my slug-free "garden":
I'm working on procuring a fiddle leaf fig tree, the biggest elephant ear plant available in the world, and some more fruit/vegetable varieties. My inspiration - Jumanji. I want to be drowning in so many plants I have to use a machete to cut my way to see sunlight.
It's a work in progress.
Anyway, back to what I came here to tell you...
I was inspired by yogurt this weekend and made my favorite (and super easy!) french yogurt cake (with blueberries!) and tried out a new recipe for cinnamon chocolate chip coffee cake (that's what Bon Appetit calls it, but I call it chocolate hazelnut coffee cake because that makes more sense).
Here's my adjusted recipe (basically I just add as much chocolate as I feel is appropriate ~ roughly triple what they tell you to use and same for the cinnamon).
Ingredients:
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup blanched hazelnuts, chopped
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped (I used bittersweet dark chocolate pennies)
1 heaping teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup sugar, divided
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 cup Greek yogurt (B.A. calls for whole, but that's impossible to find, so I just used the readily available 0% fat Greek yogurt)
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350. Spray 8" square baking pan (or I used three small loaf pans to make, well, three small loaves) with non-stick spray. Set aside.
Toss hazelnuts, chocolate, cinnamon, and 1/4 cup sugar in a bowl.
Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl.
In a stand mixer (or with a handheld), beat butter and remaining 3/4 cup sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla and add eggs one at a time, beating to blend between additions and scraping down sides of the bowl, if necessary. With mixer on low speed, add dry ingredients in 3 additions, alternating with yogurt in 2 additions, beginning and ending with dry ingredients.
Pour half of batter into prepared pan and smooth top (wet your finger with water, that helps a lot), top with half of the hazelnut mixture. Spoon remaining batter over and smooth top; top with remaining hazelnut mixture.
Bake until top is golden brown and toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 40-45 minutes.
Since I made three loaves, I kept one out for noshing and stashed the other two in the freezer for a rainy day.
It certainly won't last long, so I hope you're good at squirreling food away. I've currently got a baggie of dark chocolate covered cashews hiding somewhere and a loaf of this coffee cake hidden so deep inside of the freezer, not even the terrifying Arnold Schwarzenegger version of Mr. Freeze could get me to divulge the location of it.
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