I like baking with friends – it’s always so fun getting into the kitchen together and baking things I probably wouldn’t have made on my own. This is how the next cake was thought of.
A few days ago, I hosted few sweet friends in my kitchen – Dana Berzak, Avishag Shaar-Yeshuv and Chen Koren – all three of them are talented, charming and such great friends. We thought about what to make for Rosh Hashanah, and after a long thought we made a honey cake with Ferrero Rocher frosting, which may look impressive and difficult to make, but is actually quite easy to prepare.
This is a sweet and soft honey cake with hazelnut chocolate coating that tastes just like Ferrero Rocher, and topped with honey whipped cream and caramelized hazelnuts. It really is easy to make and will make any of your guests say WOW at the table.
Honey Cake with Chocolate Ferrero Rocher Frosting
For the honey cake:
- 3 large eggs
- 125 grams (1/2 cup) dark brown sugar
- 50 grams (3 tbsp.) honey
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Pinch of salt
- 200 ml. (1 cup) sour cream
- 125 ml. (1/2 cup) vegetable oil
- 175 grams (1 ¼ cups) all-purpose flour
- 50 grams (1/2 cup) almond meal
- 2 tsp. baking powder
For Ferrero Rocher chocolate coating:
- 250 grams milk chocolate
- 75 ml. (1/3 cup) vegetable oil
- 100 grams (1 cup) roasted hazelnuts (chopped)
For honey whipped cream:
- 125 ml. (1/2 cup) cold whipping cream
- 2 tbsp. honey
- 1 tbsp. instant vanilla pudding powder
For decoration:
- Caramelized hazelnuts (see comments)
Honey cake:
- Preheat oven to 170c degrees and grease the pans.
- In a large bowl, mix eggs, brown sugar, honey, vanilla, salt, sour cream and oil until combined.
- Add flour, almond meal and baking powder and mix until uniform.
- Divide the batter between the two pans and straighten the top.
- Bake the cakes for 35-45 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the center of the cakes comes out with moist crumbs.
- Cool completely at room temperature.
- Extract the cakes from the pans. If you want, you can straighten the “hill” created at the top with a knife and / or turn the cakes over before coating.
Ferrero Rocher chocolate coating:
- Chop the chocolate and place in a bowl. Dissolve in the microwave or over double-boiler until melted.
- Add in the oil and mix well until smooth and quite thin mixture is formed.
- Add nuts and stir and mix.
- Place the cakes on a cooling rack.
- Pour the chocolate-nut coating over top of the cakes and transfer for a short half-hour freeze to set the coating.
Honey whipped cream:
- In a bowl of a mixer with whipping attachment place cream, honey and pudding and whip at high speed until you get a very stable whipped cream.
- Transfer the whipped cream into a piping bag fitted with a serrated piping tip and drizzle at the top of the cakes.
- Garnish with caramelized nuts and serve.
- Caramelized nuts are prepared as follows: Place 50 grams of sugar on a dry pan and form a caramel. Add 30-40 grams of roasted hazelnuts and mix well until they are coated with a thin layer of caramel. Remove immediately from heat and transfer the nuts to cool on a baking paper.
- Instead of caramelized nuts, you can decorate with chopped roasted hazelnuts.
- Keep the cakes in a closed container in the fridge for up to a week.
- You can freeze the cakes (without the whipped cream) for up to one month.
- You can use any type of nuts you like.
- Instead of honey you can use maple or date syrup to diversify flavors.
- Instead of 2 loaf cake pans you can also make the cake in a 24 cm round cake pan.