Clare and some friends of hers came round to the house for tea before going off to Matt, Dan and Ginny's xmas party, so i made this hazelnut cake - although we did already have the remnants of tara's delicious banana cake and our night nanny's homemade mince pies she brought round the other day. This recipe requires such a lot of egg whites that i would never make it again unless i happened to have loads of egg whites left over.
- Whisk 8 egg whites with 1/2 teaspoon salt until stiff peaks.
- Mix 285g ground hazelnuts with 300g caster sugar and fold this into the egg whites and add zest 1 orange or lemon.
- Gradually sift 85g flour into the mixture, folding it as you go.
- Put the mixture into a 20cm cake tin and bake for 50 mins at 175C or until a skewer comes out clean.
I think i slightly overdid mine, even though i knocked off 10 mins from nigella's 1 hour time. It did have a lovely chewy texture from all those egg whites, and its nice to use ground hazelnuts which give a much nuttier flavour than almonds. It's quite a plain cake, so i made a quick raspberry sauce to go with it.
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