Espresso and Hazelnut Cake and Fairtrade Coffee

publication date: Feb 25, 2008

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author/source: Fiona Beckett/Rose Gray/Ruth Rogers

Today is the beginning of Fairtrade Fortnight, an event that might have passed unremarked a few years ago . Today Fairtrade is huge with sales in the UK of almost £500m a year and doubling year on year.

You can now buy Fairtrade wine and Fairtrade rum as well as a wide range of Fairtrade fruit including pineapple, mango and bananas. And the quality of some of the initial Fairtrade products such as tea, coffee and chocolate has improved immeasurably.

Here’s a delicious recipe from the newly published Fairtrade Everyday Cookbook (£16.99 Dorling Kindersley) from Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers of London’s famous River Café. I suggest accompanying it with a cup of freshly brewed Rwandan or Ethiopian Fairtrade coffee from my favourite coffee company Union Hand-Roasted (available online at www.unionroasted.com or from Sainsbury’s, Waitrose or Morrisons)

Ingredients
Serves 6
Preparation time 20 minutes
Cooking time 50 minutes

200g (7oz) butter, plus extra for greasing
400g (14 oz) hazelnuts, shelled
2 tbsp espresso used making Fairtrade coffee
200g (7oz) Fairtrade 70% dark chocolate, broken into small pieces
6 medium eggs
220g (7 3/4 oz) caster sugar

Method
Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F/Gas 5
Using the extra butter grease a 25cm (10in) cake tin and line with parchment paper
Roast the hazelnuts in the oven until brown. Let cool, rub off the skins and grind the nuts to a fine powder
Make up espresso, using Fairtrade coffee
Melt the chocolate with the butter and coffee in a bowl over barely simmering water. Cool, then fold in the hazelnuts
Separate the eggs and beat the yolks and sugar in a mixer until pale and doubled in size. Fold in the chocolate
Beat the egg whites until stiff and then carefully fold into the mixture. Pour into the tin
Bake in the oven for 50 minutes. Cool in the tin.
Tip Turn the cake upside down out of the tin to serve. You could dust it with some icing sugar if you like.

NB This would also be delicious with a coffee or hazelnut liqueur such as Kahlua or Frangelico