18 | 52 Strawberry Hazelnut Layer Cake

More strawberries?

Yes, please!

That's exactly why I changed this week's featured recipe to strawberries.

From blackberries. Even though blackberries are pretty awesome, too.

Strawberry Hazelnut Layer Cake

Adapted from Artful Desperado

For the cake:

100 g (3/4 cup) roasted hazelnuts, finely ground after roasting (skins removed)

270 g (2 1/4 cups) flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

210 g (15 tablespoons) soft butter

4 large eggs

40 g (1/3 cup) sugar

80 ml (1/3 cup) maple syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

zest of 1 lemon

For the mascarpone cream:

225g (1 cup) mascarpone cheese, soft

240 ml (1 cup) heavy cream

1 tablespoon powdered sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

And of course:

about 500g (1 pound) fresh strawberries (or other berries of your choice)

• Preheat the oven to 175ºC (350ºF).
• For the cake, beat together butter, sugar, and eggs (don't worry if it looks a bit separated). Add remaining cake ingredients and mix until just combined.
• Pour batter into one (or two) small, greased springform pans (20cm / 8in diameter) and bake for about 25-35 minutes. (If you devided the batter into two pans, it will be baked through quicker than if you just use one. But I think you knew that.) Let cool.
• For the mascarpone cream, mix all ingredients together until thick with nice peaks. 
• Before layering the cake, make sure that you even out any curved cake tops (by cutting the curve off). If you used only one springform pan, cut the cake in the middle horizontally to get two cakes for layering.
• Now, layer as following: cake, mascarpone cream, berries, mascarpone cream, cake, mascarpone cream, berries.

My modifications:

Strawberries instead of blackberries. Regular flour instead of spelt flour. Regular sugar instead of superfine sugar (in the cake).

I also didn't mash some of the berries to put inbetween mascarpone and whole berries.

The taste:

Well. How should I say this.

The cake didn't go well together with the mascarpone cream and the berries. I know, hard to imagine but true.

Also, the cake was waaaaaay too dense. And I neither overmixed it nor overbaked it.

So, all in all it was edible (of course) but I would not make it again. Shame, isn't it?

Have you ever baked something that didn't really work combination-wise?