Flourless Hazelnut Cake with Whipped Chocolate & Nutella Ganache

Nutty, fluffy, and fully flourless (and by flourless I mean there’s no wheat flour; it’s made with naturally gluten-free hazelnut flour), this tender and flavorful hazelnut cake has a soft, supple and satisfying texture and a swirl of fluffy whipped Nutella ganache on top, with candied hazelnut spikes for a showstopping finish.

Hazelnuts have a distinctive, earthy and nutty flavor compared to other nuts, and this cake showcases a triple dose of it, with a tender cake base made with hazelnut flour (or very finely ground hazelnuts), a cloud of whipped milk chocolate and Nutella ganache, and a sprinkle of candied hazelnuts on top for a little extra crunch and pinache.

Finally, my flourless cake trifecta is complete: pistachio, almond, and now hazelnut!

I topped this stunner with a swirl of fluffy whipped Nutella ganache and a sprinkle of candied hazelnuts for added texture and crunch (and also a few hazelnut spikes because, why not?)

There’s a reason I keep returning to to this kind of cake, where the magic of nut flour (in this case, hazelnut) combines with eggs, sugar, and butter and miraculously bakes up into a fluffy, tender cake with a texture unlike anything you’ve ever had before (unless you’ve made one of my other flourless cake recipes, of course!)

I feel like most other flourless hazelnut cake recipes out there are heavy on the chocolate, more a flourless chocolate cake with an undertone of hazelnut. This recipe, on the other hand, while it does bring in some chocolate in the topping (hazelnuts and chocolate do go oh so well together after all), it is, first and foremost, a hazelnut cake, and that’s the flavor that shines.

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Creamy Sun-Dried Tomato and Italian Sausage Pasta

Satisfying and saucy, this perfect-for-a-weeknight pasta dish features Italian sausage (you can use chicken OR pork) and baby spinach in a creamy pink tomato sauce, with chopped sun-dried tomatoes for a tangy kick.

The showstopping sauce is surprisingly creamy, especially considering there’s only 1/2 cup of cream in it. The secret is to use mostly chicken broth and white wine and thicken it with flour, and then add just a little bit of cream added at the end—resulting in a luscious, creamy sauce that’s not overly rich or heavy. A few tablespoons of tomato paste make for a pretty pink hue and an extra layer of complex, umami flavor.

This creamy, comforting pasta has become our new go-to weeknight dinner, using our tried-and-true method for making creamy, saucy pasta dishes with surprisingly little cream.

The secret to the sauce? A white-wine-and-chicken-broth base thickened with flour, and a mere half cup of cream at the end to finish it off. This variation has a few tablespoons of tomato paste added, which provides acidity and depth of flavor as well as a pretty pink hue to the sauce.

It’s not quite a one-pot meal (you still cook the pasta in a separate pot—don’t forget to set aside a bit of pasta water!) but it’s darn close and still a very quick and simple dish to throw together with minimal mess. That is my kind of comfort food!

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The Best of 2024

Farewell, 2024 (or as I like to call it, 2020 version 4.0). Hard to believe another year has come and gone, and yet here we are again looking at the yearly roundup of the best recipes published this year!

TLDR: this year was the year of kittens and pistachios.

We published only 28 recipes this year, even less than last year. Why so few? Well, as in previous years I’ve been focusing more on quality over quantity, testing recipes more times and spending more time writing in-depth, helpful posts with detailed process images (and also a few videos!)

But let’s be honest… the real reason(s) there hasn’t been nearly as many new recipes this year? Kittens. Blame the kittens.

It’s true, we started fostering kittens through our local animal shelter this summer and have since had 9 kittens (and 1 cat) come through on their way to their forever homes, including a litter of three 10-day old bottle babies (whew boy that’s a lot of work!) and a mama cat and her 5 adorably stripey babies who we named after mushrooms (ahem—Meowshrooms). Be sure to check out my dedicated kitten instagram account @loveandlittlecats for more cuteness, and while we don’t have any kittens at the moment there will definitely be more come spring.

The Meowshrooms

Bruce Stringsteen

Mama Bella, Shiitake & Oyster

Colby Jack

Daisy Mewchanan

Button & Oyster

Oyster & Shiitake

Enoki (Bah Humbug!)

Bruce and Lucy

(Psst! That adorable little grumpy santa up there is Enoki, and if you want to get a head start on next year’s Christmas cards you can purchase them—plus one of the whole gang—in the L&OO shop!)

Anyway. I’ve done a best of post every year for the past 15 years, and want to continue that tradition, if only just because it’s fun to look back and reminisce.

These year-end posts are always interesting, seeing which recipes you all loved the most and how they differed from the ones I was most excited about (although to be honest, I don’t usually post about recipes I’m not excited about.)

(Click through to see which recipe came out on top!)

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Chewy Chocolate Molasses Cookies

Chewy, chocolatey and perfectly spiced, these chocolate molasses cookies are the perfect addition to your holiday cookie boxes. With a deep chocolate flavor and chewy, fudgy texture with a delicate crunch of granulated sugar on the outside, they are sure to become a fast favorite!

The secret to extra chewy, fudgy cookies that stay soft for days is threefold: brown sugar instead of white, an extra egg yolk, and melted butter instead of creamed—melted butter also means no electric mixer is required (though you can certainly use one if you like!)

Soft, chewy molasses cookies are some of my favorite holiday cookies, but I always lament the lack of chocolate. Personally, I love the combination of gingerbread and chocolate (it’s a combo I’ve used multiple times before with delightful results). So I figured, why not take the perfectly chewy, crinkly molasses cookie and make it chocolate?

The result is nothing short of decadent: an intensely flavored, satisfyingly chewy cookie spiked with sultry molasses flavor, fragrant ginger and cinnamon spices, plus a intense hit of cocoa powder. Oh, and a pinch of instant espresso powder to enhance the bittersweet flavor of the chocolate even more (it’s such a small amount that the cookies don’t actually taste like coffee, I promise, though you can certainly leave it out if you wish).

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Spiced Persimmon Bread

Moist and flavorful and perfectly spiced, this persimmon quick bread is made with extra ripe Hachiya persimmons for a unique fall bake that can be enjoyed morning, afternoon or night!

Everyone is familiar with banana bread and pumpkin bread, but have you ever had persimmon bread? It might taste a little like you snuck a banana into a loaf of pumpkin bread, but the unique autumnal flavor of persimmon plays beautifully with seasonal fall spices (dare I say that persimmon spice is the new pumpkin spice?)

Would you believe I’ve been working on this recipe for 5 years?

Indeed, it’s hard to test a recipe whose star ingredient is only available a few weeks every year (and can sometimes take a few weeks to fully ripen at that).

For the past 5 years, I’d buy a dozen persimmons as soon as they appeared in the grocery store, then wait patiently for them to ripen to be baked into lush, fragrant persimmon bread. Unfortunately, by the time I’d baked them all into loaf after loaf of good-but-still-not-perfect persimmon bread, the short season would be over and I could not get any more for further tests. So I would dog-ear that page in my recipe notebook to try again the next year. And the next… and the next… and, well, now you see why it’s been 5 years!

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Chewy Lemon Almond Crinkle Cookies

These chewy, lemon and almond-scented cookies are made with little more than almond flour, egg whites and sugar, meaning they are naturally gluten-free!

A riff on my popular soft amaretti cookies, these almond flour crinkle cookies will spread a bit more in the oven, resulting in a lighter, chewier texture with crisp edges and eye-catching powdered sugar-coated crackly tops.

I’ve been wanting to do a lemon amaretti cookie recipe for sometime now.

Rather than just adapting my always popular soft amaretti cookie recipe for yet another flavor (I’ve done 13 so far from matcha to hazelnut), I decided to tweak the recipe a little bit more to change the shape and texture of the final cookie. Not that the original isn’t perfect as is (why fix what’s not broken) but I still wanted to do something a little different lest I start to sound like a broken record.

During my testing, I discovered that by adding a tiny bit of liquid (lemon juice in this case) and an even tinier amount of baking soda/powder, the cookies, instead of retaining their ball-like shape, spread into a delightfully crackly finish. The added leavening results in a lighter interior as well, with a wonderful chewy texture (people say they like chewy cookies but these, these are truly chewy).

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Classic Chunky Cranberry Sauce

Chunky cranberry sauce lovers, this one’s for you: with a thick and chunky texture and the perfect balance of tart and sweet (well, I think it’s perfect, but the beauty of this recipe is you can customize it to your personal tastes!) This tried-and-true recipe requires only a few ingredients, minimal prep, and under 15 minutes of time from start to finish!

Make this classic recipe your go-to cranberry sauce, and use it as a foundation for your own inspired creation—a choose-your-own-adventure cranberry sauce if you will. The only limit is your imagination!

Homemade cranberry sauce is one of my favorite parts of the holidays. The intense tartness is the perfect contrast to the rich, fatty flavors and textures on the rest of your plate. I like to get a bit of cranberry sauce with each and every bite.

Another thing I love about cranberries are their versatility: there are so many complementary flavors that go with this unique fruit, from savory winter spices to sweet summer berries, zesty citrus to spicy peppers and sultry liqueurs (just take a walk down the cranberry juice aisle in your local market and it will be obvious that cranberry goes with just about anything).

That means that I can make a different kind of cranberry sauce every year and never get bored.

But still, there’s something to be said for the classic, with the perfect balance of sweetness, and a hint of lemon to compliment the natural tannins in the cranberries.

Want More Jam Recipes?

Check out my new cookbook, That’s My Jam, with 52+ seasonal recipes for jams, jellies, marmalades & more!

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The question is: are you team chunky-homemade cranberry sauce or team jellied-from-the-can? Chances are your Thanksgiving table is probably split right down the middle, with both sides staunchly arguing for their candidate of choice. Such a heated debate has ruined many a Thanksgiving.

While this recipe is intended for the chunk-ocrats among us, if you happen to identify with the jelly-can party (or have dinner guests who do), don’t worry, I have a recipe for that too which you can find in my book, That’s My Jam. It’s a recipe that will please the canned-cran lovers but still bring that homemade touch to the table. Might I suggest making a batch of both?

If you’d rather not make two batches of sauce, you can follow this recipe but run the mostly-cooked cranberries through a food mill for a smoother, saucier texture (not quite jellied—it needs more pectin for that—but it might be the perfect compromise!) Return to the stovetop and cook a few minutes longer to thicken. You’ll end up with a batch of beautifully saucy, spoonable deliciousness that should please just about everyone!

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