Castle Dweller's Coffee Cake

A long, long time ago--so long ago that phone booths still existed and were culturally relevant--I spent a semester abroad, living in an honest-to-God castle in the Netherlands. It was pretty awesome, I'm not gonna lie. My favorite part might have been the email I sent to my parents, informing them that I had signed up for skydiving. "Don't worry," I assured them, "my desire to jump out of a plane over the Swiss Alps has absolutely nothing to do with my performance on midterms."

"If you're going to jump out of a plane," replied my father, "don't you want to land somewhere flat?" Dad tries to think practically about things.

There were many adventures to be had in Europe, and quite a few could be had in the tiny town of Well. I got my feet stuck in the mud by the river! During Carnival, I got groped by a six-foot-five adult man wearing leiderhosen, and while I recoiled in pain (he left finger-shaped bruises on one breast; it hurt), someone on a parade float threw a can of Heineken at my head! I had to eat the cafeteria food!

The first sign that we were going to be served bad food all semester: the Kasteel's dining hall is in a dungeon. Suffice to say that there are some things one should never be exposed to and one of those things is the Dutch interpretation of tacos. Seven years later, I still recoil in horror at the thought of them. The cafeteria was run by a lady named Nellie, who had a restaurant in the area that was supposed to be pretty good. I never ate at the restaurant. The cafeteria food was not good. "What kind of meat is this?" you might ask while staring at an unidentifiable croquette. "Pork," Nellie would respond. "It's pork AND meat." Oh. Helpful.

Many meals, therefore, consisted of the Peanut Butter Cup Sandwich, aka peanut butter and store-brand Nutella on toast. In tribute to the memory of that sandwich - although it has no peanut butter - I have invented a chocolate hazelnut pound cake. And when I say "invented," I really mean "the cookbook from which I got the recipe for the Almond Brown Sugar Pound Cake had variations listed for both chocolate pound cake and hazelnut pound cake, but I can't leave well enough alone, so I decided to combine them."



I will admit that the combination of icing and flash photography is rather unfortunate.

So, follow the above recipe, but using 2 cups white flour, 1 1/4 cups hazelnut flour, 1/2 cup cocoa powder, 3 cups granulated sugar, and omitting the almond extract. I also made a cream cheese glaze instead of the butter glaze.

The boyfriend unit chose to eat his piece with additional glaze, making it look even more unfortunate.



Gromit still wanted some, though.



Conclusion: This is good, but a touch sweet for my taste. It was actually better on the second day. I think I might want to reduce the sugar a little bit. And maybe try the plain hazelnut variation. Since the semester started, I took a couple of pieces to campus to my Official Testing Committee. They both approved.

Media Pairing: This film, subtitled in Dutch, was pretty much the only movie we had access to at the Kasteel. There are still a few folks who know me as Bob Ghengis Khan.