Hazelnut Cake

Here's what I love about this cake, it has the best texture, it isn't too sweet and it would be easy to adapt to what you like. It's just the kind of thing you could eat after dinner, or with a cup of coffee in the afternoon with friends. This recipe is VERY loosely adapted from Ina Garten's Lemon Cake . I had been wanting to try her recipe for so long, but a friend gave me a little can of hazelnut oil.  It's great oil for salad dressings, but I figured I could substitute the hazelnut oil for vegetable oil in Ina's recipe, and add a couple other flavoring elements.  Ina's recipe is awesome, and I intend use the basic recipe to make many other cakes to find my mood, my tastebuds and my cupboard!

If you haven't already noticed, I love nuts.  Any kind, I love them all. But, it took some doing to get hazelnuts... I checked my grocery store who wanted $6 for 4 oz... hmmm, I don't think so!  Also, none at Costco and none available at Trader Joe's! It's weird to me, especially being from Washington state and knowing that our neighbor, Oregon, grows 100% of the US grown nuts... so why so hard to buy these things??? Finally I found some at Central Market in the bulk food section, and I am so glad that I did.  They actually had two kinds of hazelnuts $9.99 a lb from Turkey and $6.99 from Oregon- I asked myself, why would I want to pay more to get nuts that have had more travel than I have this year? I toasted them myself and gave them a good rub to remove the skins.  They are so good, I found myself munching these all the time.

Makes a 9" quiche/tart pan OR 1 loaf pan
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup plain whole-milk yogurt
1 cup sugar
3 extra-large eggs
2 Tbsp Frangelico, or vanilla
1/2 cup Hazelnut oil
3/4 cup hazelnuts, chopped

Glaze (not pictured):
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 Tbsp Frangelico

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Toast your nuts for about 10 minutes, giving them a shake every couple of minutes.  The second you can smell them, you should get them out of the oven, that usually happens right before they burn. If  you are worried that you may have scorched them, immediately remove them from the pan and place in a cool, dry dish to help stop the residual heat from cooking them more. When they are cool, you can rub them between your hands, or a towel, to remove the thin brown husk.  You don't have to get all of them, but try to get most.

Spray a quiche dish with cooking spray, or butter and flour.  You could also use a loaf pan.


Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt into 1 bowl. In another bowl, whisk together the yogurt, sugar, eggs, Frangelico and Hazelnut oil. Slowly whisk the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.  Add the chopped hazelnuts.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 30-35 minutes, or until a cake tester placed in the center of the loaf comes out clean. A loaf pan will take about 50 minutes.

I sprinkled mine with Turbino sugar, also called Demerra Sugar or Sugar in the Raw, but the glaze is nice too.