Little cakes with a chocolate and hazelnut centre

A recipe from cooking-ez.com

For 24 pieces, you will need:

• 1 50 g ground hazelnuts
• 2 200 g Chocolate ganache
• 3 20 g caster sugar
• 4 350 g "Moelleux" cake batter
• Total weight: 620 grams

Times:

Preparation	Resting	Cooking	Start to finish
29 min.	30 min.	25 min.	1 hour 24 min.

Step by step recipe

1	The chocolate-hazelnut ganache Preheat the oven to 360°F (180°C). Spread 50 g ground hazelnuts out on a sheet of cooking parchment laid on a baking sheet. Toast in the oven for 10 minutes. Leave to cool. Keep the baking sheet and paper to one side to use in stage 3.
2	Prepare 200 g Chocolate ganache and add 20 g caster sugar then the toasted ground hazelnuts. Mix well and leave to cool.
3	Put the ganache into a forcing bag with a 1/2" (1 cm) nozzle and pipe long "sausages" on the cooking parchment. Put in the freezer for at least 1 hour (this can be done the day before).
4	Assembling the cakes Preheat the oven to 390°F (200°C). Put a good 1/2" (1 cm) of moelleux batter in each mould. These silicon moulds are 8x3x3 cm (approx. 3"x1"x1").
5	Take the piped ganache out of the freezer and cut into pieces to suit the length of your moulds, 6 cm here (about 2"). These are your "inserts". Tip: mark the ganache every X cm/inches, then cut across them all at one go.
6	Place an insert in each mould and press down into the batter so that they are only just showing.
7	Bake for 10-15 minutes.
8	Leave to cool on a wire rack.
9	Look how attractive these cakes are with their chocolate centres! You will notice the difference with the cake on the left, where the insert is completely covered with batter. To achieve this, put a little more batter in the mould first in stage 4, or add a thin layer to completely cover the insert.

Remarks

The insertion technique: separate preparation, shaping, then freezing before placing in a batter or dough, can be used with many different ingredients and flavours (fruits, caramel, etc.)

---