Nutella Coffee Cake

I believe I mentioned when I made the individual coffee cakes for Mother's Day that I had all kinds of ideas for different coffee cake combinations. Well, I couldn't wait any longer, and I whipped up one of them!

This variation begins with toasted hazelnuts (or 'filberts' if you're fancy.) Pulse them up in your food processor until they're roughly chopped. Remove about a third of them at this point and set aside.

Blitz up the rest until they're finely chopped, like so.

Whip up a basic coffee cake recipe, just like we've made before:

Now here's where the fun starts, especially if you're a die-hard Nutella fan like me!

Measure out a half cup of good ol' gooey, chocolatey, nutty Nutella. Put about a third of the coffee cake batter in a separate bowl.

Mix the Nutella and batter together gently with a spatula until they're the bestest of friends. Also, that lonely 2/3 of the batter that's sitting in the other bowl? Introduce it to the finely chopped hazelnuts. They'll get along great.

Spread the hazelnut batter in the bottom of a greased & floured 9" round pan. Use a spring-form pan if you have one, then you can pop the whole cake out in one pretty piece when you're done.

Spring-form pans are on my shopping list.

Spread the gooey Nutella-infused batter all over the top of the hazelnut batter.

In a separate bowl (again, yeah, we're going to go through a lot of bowls today) combine cocoa powder, flour, sugar and melted butter. Mix together until it forms a sort of loose, crumbly dough.

And there you have chocolate streusel, my friends! I bet you know where this is going.

Chopped hazelnuts!

Chocolate streusel! More hazelnuts!

Now pop that baby in the oven at 350 degrees for 25-27 minutes. Note: The toothpick test will not work here! The Nutella layer stays gooey. Be careful not to over-bake your cake or the base layer will get too dry.

I admit, I was a little freaked out when I pulled this out of the oven and saw how it had gone kind of souffle-like on me. I blame the Nutella.

But then I quickly forgave it. Because look at this beauty:

Okay, so it isn't so much to look at. But let me tell you, if you liked my basic coffee cake, and you like Nutella, this will blow you away.

And it's only a little extra work. And dishes. And it is so worth it!

Again, the basic coffee cake recipe is here, and here's what you need to add:

2/3 Cup toasted hazelnuts/filberts
1/2 Cup Nutella

Chocolate Streusel


1/2 C sugar
1/4 C cocoa powder
1/4 C flour
2 tbsp melted butter


Combine all in a bowl and mix with fork or fingers until well-combined crumbly. Note: This actually made more streusel than I needed, but I was unsure how to cut the recipe down... Does anyone actually have an 1/8 cup measure? Probably not.

Directions:
Make coffee cake batter as usual.

Portion out about a third of the batter into a separate bowl, and fold Nutella into it until well-combined.

Toast hazelnuts, place in food processor. Pulse until coarsely chopped, reserve roughly 1/3 of the nuts and put aside, continue to process remainder until finely chopped.

Mix finely chopped hazelnuts into the remaining non-Nutella batter and spread in round 9" greased and floured pan. Top with Nutella batter and spread to cover.

Sprinkle top with desired amount of streusel and chopped hazelnuts.

Bake at 350 degrees for 25-27 minutes.

Be amazed. (Well, I liked it, anyway.)

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This is a fun and not-too-difficult twist on a super easy recipe. Give it a try! And let me know how it goes - or if you have any really neat coffee cake ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks for reading. Until next time!