Tirolercake
Avoiding dry cake can be a minefield on a dessert buffet, but in Switzerland there is one saviour—the Tiroler.
The Tirolercake is a cake so chock full of nuts and chocolate that even the most notorious over-bakers can still produce a cake with a tender and relatively moist crumb.
The name ‘Tirol’ suggests that this cake comes from Switzerland’s neighbours to the east (and there are a few examples of a Tiroler Nusskuchen (though often with even more chocolate)), but the Tiroler ‘cake’ seems to be profoundly Swiss.
Tirolercake is essentially a pound cake, with some of the flour replaced by ground nuts (and a healthy addition of chocolate). Even though it’s difficult to get this cake wrong, this recipe is still optimised to produce the tenderest of crumbs.
You can find versions of the cake from the standard Swiss sources—school textbook TipTopf, Betty Bossi, Swissmilk, Annemarie Wildeisen, with differing amounts of nuts and chocolate (as well as eggs and flour).
I love this cake because it is so easy, and it’s a great way to use up any errant half-bags of ground hazelnuts leftover from Christmas baking.
150 g butter, room temperature
150 g sugar
1 tsp vanilla paste or extract
½ tsp salt
4 eggs, room temperature
150 g ground hazelnuts
120 g flour
1 tsp baking powder
150 g chocolate, chopped
Preheat oven to 180 C / 350 F / gas mark 4.
Line a 30 cm (11 inch) loaf pan with parchment paper.
In a large bowl, beat the butter, sugar, vanilla and salt together until fluffy.
In a measuring cup, whisk together the eggs.
Add the eggs to the butter mixture and beat well.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the ground nuts, flour, and baking powder. Mix in the chopped chocolate.
Fold the flour mixture into the butter mixture and scrape into the prepared pan.
Bake for about 45 minutes, or until the top springs back completely when you press it down.
If you don’t have ground hazelnuts, ground almonds work in a pinch.
More tips on room temperature ingredients and how long to bake cakes.
Want to take it to the next level? Separate the yolks and whites, beat the whites until fluffy and fold in at the end, just before baking.
Another classic cake?
Rüeblitorte
