or Mozartkugel Bundt Cake

 #BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on the BundtBakers home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient. The theme for April is "Hidden Surprise" - Bundt cakes with fillings or stuffing. There was no constraint on filling and flavor choices.The only requirement was that the cake be filled/stuffed inside. Anshie from SpiceRoots was our host for this month. If you are a food blogger and would like to join us, just send Stacy an email with your blog URL to foodlustpeoplelove@gmail.com. 

At first I'd thought I'd exhausted all my ideas on the subject as I've made a couple of hidden surprise cakes before, but then I realised how silly that thought was. Whole books were written about it, I just needed to want to do it differently and let the inspiration flow. I was thinking of the origins of bundt cakes which led me to Germany, which led me to Mozartkugel, which led me to this link. Great recipe, that I wish I followed to the T. I made one small change which I believe improved the taste, but slightly ruined the texture and the appearance - instead of using ground pistachios I used pistachio paste, which resulted in a soft, rather then firm coating for the Nutella mixture and subsequently didn't hold the shape I was hoping it would. For that reason I am bringing you the original recipe:

German Mozarthupf

for the 22cm bundt cake mould

For Mozartkugel:

200 g raw marzipan

70 g ground pistachios

100 g Nutella

70 g toasted ground hazelnuts

Instead of making kugels I made a ring that was incorporated into the cake, but the process is pretty much the same (you form small nutella/hazelnut rounds, wrap them into the pistachio marzipan mixture, then cover with melted chocolate) 

Toast or bake the hazelnuts until golden brown, let them cool take the skin off and ground leaving some bigger pieces of hazelnuts if possible, then mix it with Nutella. Refrigerate until firm enough to form 30 cm long sausage.

Mix the marzipan with ground pistachios and roll into a 35x10 cm rectangular, then place Nutella sausage in the middle, close it together (see the pictures) and form a ring. Refrigerate until your batter is ready.

For Mozarthupf:

200 g soft  unsalted butter

100 g sugar

1 sachet of vanilla sugar

4 large eggs

few drops of almond extract ( optional)

300 g flour

3 tsp baking powder

Beat the butter with sugar until light and fluffy, add the eggs, one at the time, add vanilla sugar, almond extract, then mix it with the combined flour and baking powder. Pour one third of the batter into a prepared mould, place the marzipan ring on the top making sure it does not touch the edges, top it with the rest of the batter and bake in the 180 C preheated oven for about 50 - 60 minutes.

Take it out, leave to rest for about 10 minutes then invert onto a cooling rack. Decorate with some melted chocolate and chopped hazelnuts if you wish, or just dust with a little bit of icing sugar.