Chocolate and hazelnut pancake cake

Name: Chocolate and hazelnut pancake cake
Yield: Serves 6-8
Cuisine: French recipes

This chocolate and pancake cake is made by stacking ready-made pancakes with a boozy chocolate sauce and hazelnuts, then baking before serving.

For 8 servings

Ingredients

Heat the oven to 180°C/fan160°C/ gas 4. Put the Nutella, double cream and Frangelico (or rum) in a pan and warm very gently, stirring constantly, to melt everything together and form a smooth sauce. Allow to cool slightly.
Put a crepe in a 20cm cake tin with a removable base, then spread over a thin layer of the sauce with the back of a spoon and add a scattering of hazelnuts. Put another crepe on top and repeat until all the crepes have been used up (leave the last crepe naked – you should still have some sauce and a few nuts left). Put an ovenproof plate or cake tin base on top of the crepes, then bake for 20 minutes until the pancake cake is hot throughout.
Re-warm the chocolate sauce. Take the cake out of the oven, carefully remove the ovenproof plate or cake tin base from the top, then remove the sides of the cake tin, leaving the cake on its base. Drizzle with the remaining sauce and scatter with more hazelnuts. Cut the pancake cake into wedges to serve, with a dollop of crème fraîche if you like.

Heat the oven to 180°C/fan160°C/ gas 4. Put the Nutella, double cream and Frangelico (or rum) in a pan and warm very gently, stirring constantly, to melt everything together and form a smooth sauce. Allow to cool slightly.
Put a crepe in a 20cm cake tin with a removable base, then spread over a thin layer of the sauce with the back of a spoon and add a scattering of hazelnuts. Put another crepe on top and repeat until all the crepes have been used up (leave the last crepe naked – you should still have some sauce and a few nuts left). Put an ovenproof plate or cake tin base on top of the crepes, then bake for 20 minutes until the pancake cake is hot throughout.
Re-warm the chocolate sauce. Take the cake out of the oven, carefully remove the ovenproof plate or cake tin base from the top, then remove the sides of the cake tin, leaving the cake on its base. Drizzle with the remaining sauce and scatter with more hazelnuts. Cut the pancake cake into wedges to serve, with a dollop of crème fraîche if you like.

If you want an even more indulgent cake that’s really dripping with a creamy chocolate filling, use a bit more Nutella with an extra splash of double cream stirred into it.

If the only pancakes you can find are bigger than 20cm, reduce the quantity to 8 or 10, depending on how big they are, and scale up the cake tin you use.

Frangelico is an Italian hazelnut liqueur, available in most supermarkets. If you don’t have any and don’t want to buy some just for this, use rum. The flavour is different and less sweet but the recipe will still work well.