Yes, it is finally my week! And with this heat, boy am I glad I picked something that didn't really require much baking.

I love hazelnuts. The taste, the smell... just love everything about it. Toasting the hazelnuts made my house very hot yet very fragrant... and made the heat just that much bearable.

Hazelnut Truffles (page 218-219 from Sweet Melissa's book)

Ingredients:
3 1/2 cups of blanched hazelnuts or filberts
14 ounces of best-quality semisweet (58%) chocolate
1 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons hazelnut liqueur (Frangelico)

Instructions:
• Spread the hazelnuts out on a cookie sheet and toast for about 10 minutes. Set aside to cool.

• Chop the chocolate into small pieces and put in a large bowl.

• In a small saucepan over medium heat, heat the heavy cream to scalding, or until the cream is steaming and tiny bubbles have formed along the edges. Do not boil. Immediately pour over the chocolate to cover. Set aside for 5 minutes.

• Place 1 1/2 cups of hazelnuts in a resealable plastic bag, seal tightly and tap the nuts with a rolling pin until they are finely crushed.
• Whisk the chocolate cream mixture until smooth. Stir in the liqueur and the crushed hazelnuts until blended.

• Refrigerate until the truffle base is firm enough to scoop, at least 2 hours.
Place the remaining 2 cups of hazelnuts in another resealable plastic bag, seal tightly and tap the nuts with the rolling pin until they are finely crushed. Transfer the crushed nuts to a shallow soup bowl.
• Roll each truffle in the chopped hazelnuts to cover.

The truffles are best eaten at room temperature. They keep refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.

Now, the changes that I made:
• First, I halved the recipe.
• I used semisweet chips so saved myself some chopping time.
• Instead of hazelnut liqueur, I used hazelnut spread. I really didn't want to buy a whole big bottle of Frangelico just for this, so I used about 1/3 cups of hazelnut spread and incorporated it while I was whisking the chocolate spread when it was still warm.

I have to say, these were really, really, unbelievably good. So much like the Ferrer Rocher chocolates that I think I can wrap them up in gold paper and give it away as a gift! I will definitely be making these in the future, as well as trying other flavors.

This weekend is a colleague's birthday, so I decided to bake something special to treat everyone. I didn't do anything special or fancy to this recipe; just decided to follow it directly and the cupcakes came out beautifully. I frosted it with a regular cream cheese frosting which I flavored with raspberry extract.

The dark chocolate cake came out very fluffy and moist. The chocolate taste is not so bitter that you would cringe; in fact, the slight bitterness is a nice contrast to the sweet cream cheese frosting.

I am definitely getting better at frosting, eh?

The biggest problem is that I baked 30 cupcakes and it's gonna be a real burden to get to work tomorrow! Let's hope that it really doesn't rain early in the morning...

Dark Chocolate Cake (adapted to cupcakes, makes about 30)

2 cups boiling water
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, room temperature
2 1/4 cups white sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease three 9" round cake pans. I lined muffin tins with cupcake liners. In a medium bowl, pour boiling water over cocoa and whisk until smooth. Let mixture cool. Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt; set aside.
2. In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time, then stir in vanilla. Add the flour mixture alternately with the cocoa mixture. Spread batter evenly between the 3 prepared pans. I filled the cupcake liners up to half-way full.
3. Bake in preheated oven for 25-30 minutes. I baked the cupcakes for about 20 minutes, until they puffed up all nice and cute! Allow to cool.

Cream Cheese Frosting

I used a basic cream cheese frosting (which just means that I eyeballed everything...)

I mixed the following together until they were the right consistency:

• cream cheese
• confectioner's sugar
• butter
• heavy cream
• red food coloring

This week's SMS recipe is extra special because it was picked by Melissa herself. You can see her post and the recipe at the SMS blog here.

I have to say, I've been quite busy lately, thanks to the start of summer classes. In fact, I have a midterm tomorrow and yet I procrastinated by baking today *hangs head in shame*. What can I say... I am just the queen of last minute cramming.

I have to say though, that this recipe couldn't have come on a better week (perhaps finals week, but that's besides the point). I whipped up the cookie batter in less than 30 minutes and baking was a breeze. I was too lazy to use my real oven (because when it's not doing it's real job baking, it's acting as storage for my pots and pans, which I have to drag out each time I'm baking) so I used the small toaster oven. Which is also why my cookies are not round but square since they spread in all kinds of directions. But it gives them character and a homemade quality, don't you think? :)

I also did not use toasted almonds as suggested, but added white chocolate, which gave it some sweetness since I used unsweetened chocolate instead of semisweet chocolate. Using unsweetened chocolate gave the cookies a heavenly smell of chocolate without the super sweetness of chocolate chips.

This week's Sweet Melissa Sunday recipe is the Brooklyn Brownout Cake, chosen by Elyse of Confectionary Creations. I saw this recipe and was like, dang there's so much to make and with school and work, there really is no time. So... I was going to do the unthinkable -- cheat and BUY brownies instead of making them myself. Well, Karen also thought this was unthinkable and graciously shared some of her homemade brownies with me. Thanks Karen!

Now, this cake should really just be called Triple Chocolate Cake -- there is a 2-tiered chocolate cake, with chocolate ganache frosting and brownie bits added in for good texture. I had one bite and instantly my mouth screamed, "I NEED MILK!"

On the top left is a picture of my cake, naked. It actually looks a lot like one of those Oreo cakesters, huh? In the middle is the gooey chocolate ganache with brownie bits. I didn't trim the sides, which might've been the reason why it was so hard for the ganache to cover the split between the two layers... I will try trimming them next time. There was a tip to level the cakes so that the "domed" parts were flattened, but I found that because this had a more chunky frosting, it was not necessary. Just fill the parts that are lower with more frosting and voila, you have a "flat" cake!

I've never worked with ganache before, so this was something a little tricky for me. It is a very liquid frosting, so once you pour it onto the top of the cake, it starts spreading itself and will drip down the sides of the cake. This also means that it is harder to hide the split between the layers. I waited a bit for the ganache to harden slightly and then resumed frosting the cake.

I found that this cake was very brownie-like. It was moist, but wasn't fluffy and had the dense thickness of a brownie. It was definitely very CHOCOLATELY, that's for sure.