Chocolate Hazelnut Crepe Cake
Crepes:
- 9 tablespoons (127 grams) unsalted butter (will be used for both crepes and pastry cream)
- 2⅓ cups (550 ml) milk (I use whole milk but the fat level shouldn’t matter if you prefer a different kind)
- 6 large eggs
- 1½ cups (190 grams) all-purpose flour
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup (100 grams) granulated sugar
- 1 tablespoon melted butter or neutral oil for brushing skillet
- 1⅓ cups (190 grams) hazelnuts (will be used for both pastry cream and decorative hazelnuts)
- 1 cup (120 grams) confectioners’ sugar
- 2 teaspoons hazelnut liqueur, such as Frangelico
- ¼ teaspoon table salt
- 3⅓ cups (785 ml) whole milk
- 7 tablespoons (90 grams) granulated sugar
- 5 large egg yolks
- 5 tablespoons (40 grams) cornstarch
- Butter reserved from crepes
- ⅔ cup (130 grams) granulated sugar
- 2 tablespoons water
- Pinch of flaky or fine sea salt
- Hazelnuts reserved from pastry cream
- 6 ounces (170 grams or about 1 cup) semisweet chocolate chips or finely chopped chocolate
- ¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons (90 ml) heavy cream
- 1 tablespoon hazelnut liqueur, such as Frangelico
Instructions:
The end result incorporates a pastry cream that is louder with hazelnut flavor than I ever thought possible. It thinly fills a dozen and a half stacked crepes that are then draped with a thick chocolate ganache.
- In a small saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Once it’s melted, reduce the heat to medium-low. The butter will melt, then foam, then turn clear golden, and finally start to turn brown and smell nutty. Stir the butter frequently, scraping up any bits from the bottom as you do. Don’t take your eyes off the pot—you may be impatient for it to start browning, but the time between when the butter begins to take on color and the point where it burns is less than a minute. Once the butter is brown and nutty-smelling, remove it from the heat and transfer it to a bowl. Let it cool to a lukewarm temperature.
- In a blender, combine the milk, eggs, flour, salt, granulated sugar, and 6 tablespoons of your cooled brown butter. (Alternatively, combine the ingredients in a bowl using an immersion blender, or whisk vigorously by hand.) Cover the finished mixture with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for an hour or up to 2 days.
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Spread the hazelnuts out on a baking sheet, and toast them for 10 minutes, rolling them around once or twice so that they toast evenly—keep an eye on them so they don’t burn, but let them get some color.
- Let hazelnuts cool. Some people like to rub the nuts in a dish towel to loosen the skins, but I hate the mess this makes all over my kitchen when I inevitably forget that the towel is a mess of flakes and pick it up. Instead, with dry hands, I roll a few together between my palms until the skins come off—usually most, but not all do. This is fine—and the mess stays on the tray.
- In a food processor, grind 1 cup of the toasted hazelnuts (set the last ⅓ cup aside for decorating), confectioners’ sugar, liqueur, and salt together. It will at first make a ruckus (warning: babies don’t like this), then will grind to a coarse chop followed by a powder. Keep running the machine until the powder begins to come together in damp-looking crumbs that combine in small clumps, and then stop. If you keep running the machine, you’ll end up with a more liquefied hazelnut butter as the oil from the nuts separates out; we don’t want this.
- In a saucepan, combine the hazelnut paste, milk, and sugar over medium-high heat, and bring to a simmer, stirring a bit so that it does not scorch. In a medium bowl, whisk together the yolks and cornstarch until smooth. Stream a small spoonful of the hot milk mixture into the egg-yolk bowl while whisking. Repeat this a few times with additional spoonfuls of hot milk, and by the time you’ve done five or six additions, you’ll find that the egg-yolk bowl is hot; this is how you know you’ve added enough. Now go in reverse, slowly pouring the warm egg-yolk mixture back into the hot milk in the saucepan, whisking the whole time, until the two are combined. Return the saucepan to the stove and, continuing to whisk (sense a theme here?), bring the mixture to a boil and cook for 2 minutes; the mixture should thicken upon boiling, to a loose pudding consistency. Remove from the heat, and stir in the reserved 3 tablespoons of browned butter from the crepe-batter recipe above. Transfer it to a bowl (it will cool faster), press a piece of plastic wrap against the top of the custard (to prevent skin formation), and chill the pastry cream in the fridge until fully cold, which could take a couple hours. If you are more pressed for time, set the bowl of custard in a half-full bowl of ice water (i.e., not so full that it could spill into the custard bowl), and it will chill there faster, especially with some stirring to redistribute the temperatures.
- Preheat a medium (9-inch) skillet or crepe pan over medium-high heat. Once it’s heated, brush pan lightly with melted butter or oil. Pour ¼ cup batter into skillet, swirling it until it evenly coats the bottom, and cook, undisturbed, until the bottom is golden and the top is set, about 2 minutes. Carefully flip—I like to look for the driest-looking and darkest edge, lift it gently with a spatula so that it gets a second to cool, and use my fingers to hold on to it from that edge while flipping—and cook on other side for 5 to 10 seconds. In all likelihood, toss this one in the trash, and probably the next one too: The first two were never meant to be. I promise, you will eventually hit your stride and wonder why you ever feared the crepe. Transfer finished crepes to a paper-towel-covered plate to cool; it’s safe to stack them as they cool, because you will miraculously still be able to separate them later. Continue with remaining batter. Your last crepe—the one where you hoped you had enough batter for one more but indeed did not—will likely look like a cobweb. This is your snack; now take a break. The batter yields nineteen 9-inch crepes; pastry-cream volume is enough for the sixteen that will probably make it.
- Lay first crepe on your cake stand or plate. Spread with ¼ cup pastry cream. Repeat with all remaining crepes but the last one, which will act as your cake’s lid. Chill the cake in fridge until you’re ready to coat it in chocolate—the next step.
- Spread out a piece of parchment paper on your counter, and have ready a small set of tongs or large tweezers. In a small, heavy saucepan, cook sugar and water together over high heat until the sugar melts and begins to turn a pale-beige color, about 3 to 5 minutes. Add a pinch of a flaky or fine sea salt and the hazelnuts, rolling the hazelnuts around to coat them. The caramel will cook a shade darker while you do this, to a light copper color. Once it has, remove the mixture from the heat. Remove the hazelnuts one by one with the tongs, spreading them out on the parchment paper so that they don’t touch. Either cool the nuts on the counter, or slide the paper onto a plate and put the plate in the fridge for 5 minutes. Once firm, they’ll fall right off the parchment paper. I like to leave some whole, and bash some up with the back of a heavy cup or pan, so they’re in mixed-size pieces. I like them to look a little messy.
- Put chocolate in a heatproof bowl. Heat cream and liqueur to a simmer in a small saucepan and pour over chocolate. Let sit for a minute, then stir until smooth. If this wasn’t enough heat to create a very thick but still (barely) pourable smooth mixture, put a little water in the saucepan that previously heated the cream, bring it to a simmer, place the bowl of chocolate and cream over it, and stir it until it thins and smooths out to the desired consistency.
- Remove the chilled crepe cake from fridge. Pour chocolate mixture over top, and spread with your spatula to cover the top crepe, gently nudging the chocolate over the edges in a few places. Decorate the top with the candied hazelnuts. Set the cake in fridge (allowing the chocolate to set) until needed.