Marzipan cake

Ingredients for 15 servings:

• 50 g spelt flour
• 200 g hazelnuts, ground
• 6 eggs, separated
• 180 g sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 90 g butter
• 380g Nutella
• 70 g hazelnuts, chopped
• 1 marzipan cover
• 2 pkt. Cake cream (vanilla flavor) from Dr. Oetker
• 600 ml milk
• 400 g butter

Instructions

Working time approx. 2 hours; Rest time approx. 2 hours; Cooking/baking time approx. 23 minutes; Total time approx. 4 hours 23 minutes

First, bake the hazelnut sponge cake. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks. Then, beat the egg yolks with the sugar until frothy. Combine the flour, ground hazelnuts, and baking powder, and melt the 90g butter in the microwave. Add the flour mixture and melted butter to the egg yolk mixture and gently fold in. Then fold in the egg whites. Pour everything into a 26 or 28cm springform pan lined with baking paper and shake or smooth the surface. Preheat the oven to 180°C (top/bottom heat) and place the pan on the middle oven rack. After exactly 23 minutes, I take it out so it doesn’t get too dry. It’s wonderfully moist! Now remove the sponge cake from the pan and turn it out onto a wire rack. Let it cool. To speed things up, you can refrigerate it. Prepare the cream mixture with milk and butter according to the package instructions. Cut the cooled sponge cake in half horizontally to create two layers. Place the bottom layer on a cake plate. You can use a cake ring, but it’s not necessary, as the cream is sturdy enough. I made it without a cake ring. Spread the bottom sponge layer generously with warmed Nutella. The Nutella spreads more easily when warm. Then sprinkle generously with chopped hazelnuts. Then add about 2/3 of the vanilla cream. Place the second layer on top of the cream. Spread the top generously with Nutella and cover the entire cake all around and on top with the vanilla cream. Leave some vanilla cream left over for the decorative dots. Finally, place the marzipan topping on the cake. Place the remaining cream in a piping bag and pipe about 15 dots of cream onto the cake. Sprinkle these with chopped hazelnuts. You can easily make the cake a day in advance, but I recommend placing the marzipan topping on the cake shortly before, as it will “sweat” a bit in the refrigerator. The cake freezes very well. The cream stays stable and firm for a very long time.