Cinnamon Nutella Cake

Happy Birthday Mum! Now my Mum loves cakes with nuts: almonds, hazelnuts, Brazil nuts, pine nuts, pistachios - the list goes on and on. So when I asked her what cake I should bake for her birthday, without hesitation she said, "that Nutella one." Yes! I love that one too, mostly because of the Nutella part, gives me an excuse to buy a giant jar!

So I started by chopping my hazelnuts. This time I didn't feel like bringing out my Mezzaluna, which is a traditional Italian curved knife with handles on both ends. It kind of looks like a half moon and ensures no chopped off fingers. Instead, I bashed my hazelnuts with a rolling pin, placing the nuts in a bag and covering it with a tea towel. If you have a food processor, you can just blitz them a little, but let's admit it: bashing with a rolling pin is more fun. We know why, we just won't say why, but it is and we do it!

Now the original recipe from BBC Good Food says to put all the ingredients, bar the Nutella and hazelnuts, into a bowl and mix with a wooden spoon. Did I do that? Nope. I am not falling for that (again...). I got my amazing stand alone mixer, started it and added in all the ingredients one by one through the funnel. Bliss. Loud, but still blissful. I know Good Food says that to make the method appear easier, but when your arm starts aching or lumps of butter and sugar start flying out the bowl, the pain of cleaning it up isn't easy. If you have an electric hand whisk, that method is fine. 

As it was whisking away, I got a hit of aroma from the cinnamon that reminded me of a cinnamon cereal I used to eat. Cinnamon toasties or something like that. 

When everything was mixed, I turned off the mixer and scraped the bowl with a spatula just to get any bits that the mixer might have missed. I then spooned 3/4 of the mixture into my tin and dolloped 4 heaped, and I mean very heaped, tablespoons of Nutella on top of it. The best part of that was licking the spoon after I had added my blobs of Nutella. If that can't convince you to make this cake, well, I don't know then. I added the remaining quarter of the batter over the Nutella blobs and using a knife, swirled the batter with the Nutella to create a marbling affect underneath and smoothed the top with my spatula. 

With a sprinkling of hazelnuts, it was ready to go into a 180 C oven for an hour. Before bringing it out, I checked it by sticking a knife in the middle and checking if it came out clean. It did, so I knew it was ready. If it wasn't, I would have put it back in for 10 minutes more. 

The perfect balance of sweet, chocolate and crunch. A very moreish cake, especially when it's still warm from the oven, the Nutella will be slightly melted - so beautiful.

Ingredients:

• 175g Butter 
• 175g Caster Sugar
• 3 Eggs
• 200g Self-Raising Flour   
  
• 1tsp Baking Powder
• 2 tsp Ground Cinnamon 
• 4tbsp Milk
• 4 heaped tbsp Nutella 
• 50g chopped Hazelnuts

- pre-heat oven to 180 C