Hazelnut, Chocolate and Coffee Cake

I wanted to make a long loaf cake, so that it could be easily shared with CT, who was coming for one of his occasional dinners. We really don't see much of him now unless he needs something; this time he was using us for a parcel delivery that he couldn't be at home for.

After taking part in the We Should Cocoa challenge of making a chocolate cake for less than £1 (see everyone's efforts here), I had some baking spread left over, so decided to use some in this cake - usually I would use softened butter, despite cooks such as Mary Berry and Delia Smith advocating the use of 'margarine'.

Ingredients
200g baking spread
200g golden caster sugar
225g SR flour
50g ground hazelnuts
1 teaspoon baking powder
4 eggs
2 teaspoons instant coffee dissolved in 1 tablespoon hot water
100g plain chocolate chopped into large chunks
milk to mix, if necessary

Filling (chocolate hazelnut buttercream)
30g baking spread
60g icing sugar
60g chocolate and hazelnut spread (Nutella)

My loaf tin has roughly the same capacity as a 2lb tin, but has the cross-section of a 1lb tin, so is much longer than normal. This seemed like a good idea when I bought it, but the cakes made in it usually look badly proportioned.

Method
Put all the cake ingredients except the milk and chocolate into a bowl and mix to a soft batter with a spoon or an electric mixer. Add milk if necessary to give a dropping consistency (I used just a tablespoon) and then fold in the chopped chocolate. Simple!

Spread into the prepared tin and bake at 180C for about an hour, or until a test probe comes out clean and dry.

When cake is cold, split in half and fill with the chocolate hazelnut buttercream - just beat the ingredients together until light and fluffy.

The flavours of coffee, chocolate and hazelnuts were well balanced in this cake, although it needed the filling to counteract a little dryness in the cake crumb. I probably should have used a little less flour. The photo makes it look as if the chocolate chunks all sank, but that wasn't the case - I just happened to cut the cake at a bad point for a photograph!