Nutella Crumbled Cake

I found a lovely recipe on Giallozafferano an Italian website, for a Nutella Crumbled Cake.  It looked so good that I couldn’t wait to try it.

The idea of the recipe is to make a crumbly pastry and fill it with a Chocolate and Hazelnut spread mixed with ricotta.  It seemed to be very easy to make and the result on that website looked very good indeed.

For mine I used a 25cm/10 inch square tin, which is the conversion from the recommended 11 inch round tin.  Although it took a while to make, since the crumbled pastry mixture has to chill for an hour, and then a baking time of 80 minutes, it is well worth the very little effort.  Although I used a processor for cutting the flour into the butter it could be done by hand, with a little extra effort.

My efforts were well received by those who ate the cake, and the small taste that I had was really very delicious, with the crumbly short pastry and the rich filling.

So if you want something a little different that isn’t difficult to make, but that tastes very good indeed this is one to try.

Ingredients:

• 500g (4 cups)cake/pastry flour(or plain is ok)
• 200g(just over 14 tbsp)butter, cold and cubed
• 5g(heaped tsp) baking powder
• seeds from one vanilla bean
• pinch of salt
• 2 medium eggs(large in USA)
• 300g(2 1/3 cups) icing sugar
• 200g(7 oz) chocolate hazelnut spread
• 600g(21 oz) ricotta(drained of excess liquid)

Method:

1. Mix the flour and baking powder together.
2. Place that mixture into the bowl of a food processor, add the cubed butter, salt and the vanilla bean seeds.
3. Pulse the mixture until the butter is cut in and the mixture has a sandy texture.
4. Pour the mixture into a large bowl.
5. Add the icing sugar and stir to mix in.
6. Make a well in the centre and drop in the two eggs.
7. Use the tips of your fingers to rub the dry mixture into the eggs until you have a crumbly, slightly clumping pastry mixture.
8. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill for 1 hour.
9. Place the ricotta and chocolate hazelnut spread into a bowl and mix until all is nicely combined.  A few white spots of ricotta wont matter.
10. Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/350F
11. Grease and line(with parchment paper) a 25cm/10 inch square cake tin, at least two inches tall.
12. When the pastry crumble has chilled for an hour take a little more than half and sprinkle evenly all over the base of the cake tin.  Press down lightly.
13. Place the ricotta filling on top, in the centre, leaving about 1 inch all round the edges.  Piping the mixture is an easy way to do this.
14. Level the ricotta mixture but don’t press closer to the edge of the pan.
15. Sprinkle the remaining crumble mixture evenly over the ricotta and down the sides of the tin.  Press lightly around the edge.
16. Bake in the oven for 80 minutes, turning after 40 minutes.
17. If the top is browning too quickly cover with aluminium foil after an hour.
18. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely in the tin before carefully removing onto a plate.