Nutella… such a wonderful creation. It holds a special place in my heart, and I absolutely love baking with it! I almost feel like I’m cheating every time I add it to a cake, because I know it’s going to be so delicious!! For this cake I tried out Yolanda Gampp’s chocolate cake recipe, which is such an amazing recipe! The layers are so delicious, and easy to work with.  This cake is frosted with a black cocoa buttercream, Nutella buttercream, and vanilla buttercream. I frosted this cake using a textured buttercream look, inspired by the wonderful @KarleesKupcakes! The full tutorial is included below:

Recipes:

• 4 lbs of Yolanda Gampp’s chocolate cake recipe
• 1 cup simple syrup
• 1 1/2 batches of my American Buttercream
• 1/2 batch of my chocolate ganache drip recipe
• 1.5 jars of Nutella
• 1 cup chopped, toasted hazelnuts
• 8 Ferrero Rocher Truffles

Bake 4, 7-inch round cake layers using Yo’s recipe and instructions. Allow layers to cool fully before leveling. Place pans into the freezer for 1 hour, to accelerate the cooling process, and lock in the moisture.

While the layers cool, make the frosting! Once the vanilla frosting is made, place 1/5 of the frosting into a bowl. Add 1/2 cup black cocoa, and 1 extra Tbsp of heavy cream. Mix until fully combined, then cover with saran wrap and set aside (be sure to place the plastic wrap directly on top of the frosting to prevent crusting!). Place 1/5 of the vanilla frosting into another bowl, and also cover and set aside. Add 3/4 of a jar (roughly 1 cup, give or take) of Nutella into the remaining frosting, plus and extra 2 Tbsp heavy cream. Mix until fully incorporated, and cover with plastic wrap.

Once the layers are fully cooled, remove cake layers from pans and level the tops using a serrated knife. Use a thick, sterile brush to douse the cake layers with simple syrup. Stack and frost they layers, using the black cocoa buttercream on the first layer. Spread a generous layer of frosting, then drizzle warm Nutella over the frosting using a spoon. Sprinkle toasted hazelnuts over this. Repeat on the next layer using the Nutella buttercream, and on the third layer with vanilla frosting.

Cover the cake in a thin layer of frosting (crumb coat) to trap any run-away crumbs. Chill the cake in the freezer or fridge for about 5 minutes, until the buttercream is firm to the touch.

Next, add a thicker, second layer of Nutella buttercream. Use a bench scraper to smooth the sides of the cake, and a small offset spatula to smooth the top of the cake. You can see a full tutorial on how to frost a cake with smooth sides here.

To create a textured buttercream look, use a small offset spatula to spread white s buttercream smears around the cake. Thin these out using a bench scrapper, to created rougher edges on each bit of white frosting. Layer the black cocoa frosting onto the cake next, using the same technique. Chill the cake for 5 minutes in the fridge, the add some Nutella buttercream streaks.

 

Swirl together the remaining frosting colors into a piping bag fitted with a Wilton 4B tip. Pipe buttercream swirls onto the top of the cake, leaving about an inch of open space between each swirl. Top each swirl with a chocolate truffle (I used Ferrero Rocher).

Use a squirt bottle to drizzle the chocolate ganache between the swirls, to make some short drips. To learn my tips and tricks on adding chocolate drips to a cake, you can click here.

It was so fun to mix up the look of this cake with this textured buttercream look! While perfectly smooth sides on a cake are wonderful, it’s exciting to try different techniques. Using three different frosting types inside the cake made the slices look beautiful!! They almost had an ombre effect 🙂

This cake was made to test this cake design for my weekly Food Network Livestream. I never have a hard time dreaming up cake ideas, but making sure I’ll be able to live stream them is a different story! I like to make a test cake the weekend before to ensure my livestream will go smoothly. If you want to see a live demo, be sure to tune into the Food Network Facebook Page at 7:45pm EST this Wednesday 🙂