Gianduia cake

• 200 g dark chocolate
• 200 g of soft butter
• 200 g finely chopped hazelnuts (or hazelnut flour)
• 30 g of bitter cocoa
• 200 g of sugar (I used fine cane sugar)
• 4 eggs at room temperature
• a pinch of salt

INGREDIENTS (for the icing)

• 2 tablespoons of hazelnut cream
• 80 g of dark chocolate and whole and halved hazelnuts

• In a bain-marie saucepan (or if you don't have one, place a bowl over a saucepan with water) melt the chocolate.
• Separate the yolks from the whites. Beat the egg whites with 50 g of the sugar taken from the total.
• Work the butter with the remaining sugar (use the spatula with the planetary mixer) starting at low speed and increasing until you have a smooth cream.
• Add one egg yolk at a time, a pinch of salt, the hazelnut flour and the cocoa.
• Add the melted chocolate. Fold in the whipped egg whites with a spatula.
• Pour into a mold lined with baking paper (a circle on the bottom and stripes on the circumference).
• Bake at 170 ° for 40 minutes in a preheated oven. Do the toothpick test and remember that the inside must remain slightly moist. Leave in the oven turned off with the door half open for 10 minutes.
• Let it cool and unmold. If the surface is uneven you can turn it upside down (I didn't do it even though it wasn't perfectly smooth because the ganache and hazelnuts cover it).
• Prepare the ganache by melting the chocolate and stirring in the spreadable hazelnut cream.
• Pour lukewarm on the surface of the cake and add the whole, halved or chopped hazelnuts.