Flourless Hazelnut Torte
(with whipped-cream frosting)
3 cup hazelnuts, + more for decoration (blanched if you can find them)
12 egg whites
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/3 cup honey (something light, or orange blossom)
seeds from 1/2 vanilla bean (or 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract if you can
find one kosher for passover)
2 drops almond essential oil (or 3/4 tsp almond extract if you can find
one kosher for passover)
Roast the hazelnuts at 400F until browned. If they have skins, rub in
them in a towel to remove as much of the skins as possible (which will
be bitter). Grate the nuts as fine as you can--a nut grater will work
best, but a food processor is also possible, just don't grind to nut
butter.
Grease three 9" pans and line with waxed paper. Preheat oven to 325F.
Beat the egg whites with the salt until soft peaks form. Add the
remaining ingredients (if you're using vanilla seeds, you may want to
beat them with the honey first so the seeds will separate) and beat to
stiff peaks. Gently fold in the nuts.
Turn into prepared pans, mounding slightly in the center and making a
trench around the outside. Bake 50-60 minutes, until the sides are
slightly brown and the top is only slightly sticky.
Let pans cool on racks for 5 minutes, then turn out and peel off wax
paper.
This can be frosted and filled however you like. If a dairy desert is
okay, this is my favorite:
3 cup heavy or whipping cream
3 Tbsp maple syrup (or other sweetener)
3 tsp vanilla extract (or vanilla seeds from one bean)
8-12oz fruit preserves (can be either one or two flavors)
Thoroughly chill everything, including the processor parts. Combine the
cream, sweetener, and vanilla in a food processor (I doubt that a
blender will work for this), and process until the cream turns very
thick. If your processor isn't large, you'll need to do it in two
batches. This produces very dense whipped cream--very little air gets
incorporated. Be careful--this is easy to overbeat, although if you do,
sometimes you can salvage it by continuing to beat. (I think what
happens is that at first you produce butter and buttermilk, same as
overbeating with a mixer, but then the food processor is able to
recombine them.)
Take a third of the whipped cream and fold it together with the
preserves (if you're using two flavors, divide that third into two). Use
this cream-preserve mix as the cake filling (either one flavor for both
layers of filling, or two different flavors). Use the remaining
two-thirds for the sides and top. I usually decorate this with whole
hazelnuts and raspberries (with raspberry preserves in at least one of
the layers' filling), maybe with ground hazelnuts on the sides.
If you use the whipped-cream frosting, you do need to keep the frosted
cake refrigerated.
The texture of whipped cream from the food processor is very different
from traditionally whipped cream--more like clotted cream or packaged
creme fraiche. It's also very stable--I've kept it for several days in
the refrigerator without it separating.
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