Karin's Week Three Recipe: Nutella Pound Cake

This recipe came out of the "real food" magazine put out by the Lunds/Byerly's grocery chain - the Winter 2009 issue. My mother knows how much I like Nutella and how much my household likes sweets, and thought it would be a great recipe for us.

Nutella Pound Cake

4 large eggs, at room temp
2t vanilla
1.5 c flour
3/4 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
1c (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 1/4 c sugar
1 jar Nutella

Preheat oven to 325. Grease and flour a 9x5 loaf pan. Fill a medium bowl with very hot tap water, and set in the unopened jar of Nutella. Combine the eggs and vanilla in a large measuring cup and lightly beat together. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt (I used about 2 twists of my salt grinder) in a medium mixing bowl.

Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl on medium-high speed until fluffy, about 3min, scraping down bowl if necessary. Reduce speed to medium-low and pour in egg mixture in a slow stream, stopping once or twice to scrape down bowl. Turn mixer to low and add the flour mixture 1/2c at a time, scraping bowl after each addition. After last addition, mix for 30 sec on medium.

Scrape 1/3 of the batter into the pan and smooth with a spatula. Take the Nutella out of the water bath and spread 1/2 of the jar onto the batter, smoothing with a clean spatula. Repeat with remaining batter and Nutella, ending with batter on top. Run a butter knife through the pan to create marbling.

Bake 1h 15min until cake is golden and toothpick comes out clean. Let cake cool in pan for 15min and then remove from pan and cool on a rack.

I would definitely make this again. It is delicious and fairly easy to mix up. The only down side was that my cake fell in the center when cooling. This is probably due to the fact that I had to leave for work right after it came out of the oven, and so I cooled it in the pan. And, for some reason, my Nutella did not marble, but fell to the bottom of the cake, creating a "U" of fudge around the bottom of the cake. Still tasty though.