Oh my, was this cake a labor of love!  My daughter Hannah requested a crepe cake for her birthday after seeing a picture of one on Pinterest (doesn’t she know 99.9% of pinned recipes are for viewing pleasure only?) and she asked that we make it together.  How hard could it be?  I thought to myself.  After all, we’d made crepes several times before.  All we needed to do was make a big batch (30 to be exact) along with some pastry creme and a little chocolate ganache.  Right?

  The original recipe (found here) comes from Martha Stewart Living and it is a recipe (cake) within a recipe (filling) within a recipe (glaze/ganache).  Our only modifications were that we:

1. used plain crepes for our base (recipe here) rather than the chocolate crepes in the Martha recipe
2. made half of the suggested amount of hazelnut filling as the Martha recipe made a whopping 8 cups
3. substituted Nutella (slightly warmed in microwave to soften) for the hazelnut creme in the filling recipe, and
4. decorated with 4 oz chopped hazelnuts (toasted in the oven at 350 for 5 minutes then cooled)

Did it take several hours?  Yes.  Was it worth it?  ABSOLUTELY.  The meringue based hazelnut filling was as fluffy as a cloud and the crunchy salty hazelnuts against the velvety chocolate ganache made for a heavenly match.  The best part was that I had Hannah all to myself for the afternoon, and she was so proud of what we created.  I had to laugh when I left the dinner table to fetch the cake and she asked me to please arrange her birthday candles in rainbow order.  The apple definitely does not fall far from the tree.

all photos via the aesthete and the dilettante