Brown Sugar Hazelnut Bundt Cake

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Peggy from Pantry Revisited. She chose the Brown Sugar Bundt Cake, which sadly is the last Bundt cake remaining in Baking from My Home to Yours. I love making Bundt cakes and always look forward to making them! This cake is heavy on the brown sugar and originally called for prunes and pears. I opted to make the all nut variation and used ground and chopped hazelnuts and hazelnut extract in the batter. Yum! I love hazelnuts! If you would like the complete recipe for this Bundt cake, visit Peggy’s blog.

I had recently purchased some of the great hazelnuts that I like, the ones from Holmquist Hazelnuts. They’re local and just taste that much better I think. Mine were already roasted, too, so that adds extra flavor. I mixed the cake up and the beauty of the Bundt cake is that they are so quick. The cake was ready to go and I was waiting for the oven to come to temperature. It baked up just fine and it smelled heavenly while baking. You could really smell the nuts roasting and the brown sugar gave a nice caramel smell.

Unfortunately, I didn’t butter the Bundt pan adequately, so the top of my cake stuck. At first I was just going to cut the one piece that looked whole and go with that, but my husband suggested that I frost it and make it in to something quite different. He had found a Nutella frosting, and we both agreed that would be great with the brown sugar hazelnut cake. So I basically took this nice simple cake that would be great with tea or coffee and made it into a more decadent treat.

I trimmed the top of my cake to make it even, which was tricky. (Also, don’t do this when you are already frustrated, since it will likely just make you more so.) Frosted, the cake looked ok. My husband wanted to try his hand at piping frosting so he piped the rosettes on the top. They look pretty good! This cake, especially frosted, is wonderful. The cake is a beautiful caramel hazelnut flavor and then the Nutella frosting adds some extra sweetness. While this cake is good on its own, it’s even better with the frosting. I've posted the frosting recipe, if you are interested!

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 179