Italian Soft Nutella Cake with Molten Chocolate Hazelnut Center | Torta Soffice alla Nutella con Cuore Fondente
Updated: Sep 14
This is the whole cake version of the Italian soft Nutella cake, the one that goes to the table intact, gets sliced in front of everybody and keeps its dark hazelnut heart soft for a whole afternoon. It is not a warm dessert. The point is a core that stays fluid at room temperature, hours after the cake has cooled, so the last slice behaves exactly like the first.
That requirement changes the recipe more than it sounds. A spoonful of Nutella buried in batter firms again as the cake cools, giving a dense sweet pocket rather than a flowing centre. To keep the middle genuinely fondente at 68°F (20°C) the filling is rebuilt as a ganache, loosened with cream and hazelnut oil so its set point falls below room temperature, then frozen solid as a disc. Everything around it is a classic torta soffice with a fine pale crumb that exists to be a quiet container.
Yield: 12 slices from one 9 inch cake. Prep: 40 minutes. Freeze the core: 4 hours. Bake: 50 minutes. Cool: 3 hours. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: dolce. Region: Piedmont, Langhe and Turin.
The Story
The pairing of cocoa and hazelnut is a Piedmontese response to a shortage. When the continental blockade of the early 1800s cut Turin off from its cacao supply, the confectioners of the city stretched what chocolate they had with ground Tonda Gentile hazelnuts from the Langhe, the hills south of Alba. The paste was moulded into small upturned boat shapes and named after Gianduja, the masked character of the Turin carnival, and gianduiotto is still made there today.
The jar came later and from the same hills. Pietro Ferrero, a pastry maker in Alba, faced another cocoa shortage after the Second World War and produced a sliceable loaf called Giandujot in 1946. His son loosened it into a spreadable version, Supercrema, in 1951, and the name Nutella arrived in 1964. Within a decade it was the standard filling in Italian home baking, and the torta soffice, the plain butter cake made for birthdays and merenda, is where it settled. What follows is that domestic cake taken seriously, with the centre engineered so it still runs three hours after the oven goes off.
Ingredients
For the molten hazelnut core
Nutella, 1 cup (300 g)
Heavy cream, 1/3 cup (80 ml)
Dark chocolate 70 percent, chopped, 1 1/2 oz (40 g)
Toasted hazelnut oil, 2 tbsp (30 ml)
Unsalted butter, soft, 1 tbsp (14 g)
Fine sea salt, 1/4 tsp (1.5 g)
For the cake batter
All purpose flour, 2 3/4 cups (340 g)
Unsalted butter, soft at 65°F (18°C), 1 cup (227 g)
Granulated sugar, 1 cup (200 g)
Large eggs, at room temperature, 4
Whole milk, at room temperature, 3/4 cup (180 ml)
Baking powder, 2 tsp (8 g)
Pure vanilla extract, 2 tsp (10 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1/4 tsp (1.5 g)
For finishing
Nutella, for the glaze, 1/2 cup (150 g)
Toasted hazelnuts, roughly chopped, 1/4 cup (35 g)
Powdered sugar, 2 tbsp (15 g)
For the pan
Unsalted butter, soft, 1 tbsp (14 g)
All purpose flour, 1 tbsp (8 g)
Parchment round, 9 inch (23 cm), 1
Preparation
Building the ganache core the day before
Bring the cream just to the point where it steams, pour it over the chopped dark chocolate and leave it undisturbed for two minutes. Stir from the centre outward until glossy, then beat in the Nutella, the hazelnut oil, the soft butter and the salt. The oil and the cream are what push the set point of this filling below room temperature, which is the whole reason the core still flows once the cake has cooled. It should fall from the spatula in a thick unbroken ribbon.
Shaping and freezing the disc
Draw a 6 inch (15 cm) circle on parchment, turn the sheet over and set it on a flat tray. Spoon the ganache inside the circle and spread it to an even 1/2 inch (12 mm), keeping the edge clean. Freeze at least 4 hours and preferably overnight. It must be rigid enough to lift in one piece, because a soft disc sinks and disperses into the batter and leaves brown marbling instead of a heart.
Creaming the butter and sugar
Beat the butter with the sugar on medium speed for a full 6 minutes, scraping the bowl down twice. This is the only aeration the cake receives, and the commonest reason a torta soffice comes out heavy is that this stage was cut to two minutes. The mass should move from yellow and grainy to pale ivory and roughly double in bulk, with no sugar crystals audible against the side of the bowl.
Adding the eggs and the vanilla
Add the eggs one at a time, beating 30 seconds after each and scraping the bowl before the next goes in. Cold eggs chill the butter and break the emulsion, which is why they sit out beforehand. If the mixture does split and look curdled, beat in one tablespoon of the measured flour for 15 seconds and it will come back. Add the vanilla at the end.
Folding in the flour and the milk
Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together so the leavening is evenly spread. Add the dry mixture in three parts alternating with the milk in two, beginning and ending with flour, on the lowest speed. Stop while a few streaks of flour still show and finish by hand with five turns of a spatula. Every rotation past that point builds gluten and trades the soft close crumb for something bready.
Filling the pan and setting the core
Butter the springform, line the base with parchment and dust the sides with flour. Spread a little over half the batter across the bottom and push it an inch up the sides to build a shallow wall. Take the disc straight from the freezer, peel off the parchment and set it in the middle, leaving a clear inch of batter all round so no part of it touches the pan. Cover with the rest, smooth the top and seal the join at the edges.
Baking the cake
Bake at 350°F (175°C) on a rack in the lower third for 45 to 55 minutes. The cake is ready when the top is deep gold, springs back under a fingertip, and a skewer pushed in 1 1/2 inches (4 cm) from the edge comes out clean. Never test the middle, which reads wet at any bake time and has sent more of these cakes back into the oven to dry out than any other error. Tent loosely with foil at 35 minutes if the top is colouring fast.
Cooling before the glaze
Rest the cake in its pan on a rack for 20 minutes, run a thin blade around the ring and release the collar, leaving the cake on the pan base. Do not invert it or lift it off the base at any stage, since the centre is liquid and offers no support. Leave it a further 2 1/2 hours. Unlike the hot tortino version, this cake is served at room temperature and the ganache is built to be flowing at exactly that point.
Glazing and finishing
Warm the finishing Nutella for 20 seconds until just pourable and spoon it over the centre of the cooled cake, letting gravity find the edge rather than spreading it to the rim. Scatter the chopped hazelnuts while the glaze is tacky so they hold. Dust the exposed outer ring with powdered sugar through a fine mesh sieve, keeping it clear of the glaze where it would dissolve into a grey film within minutes.
Plating
Present the cake whole and cut it at the table. The first wedge is where the work shows: a pale clean crumb, a dark ring where the core has met the batter, and the ganache moving out across the plate without help. Use a long thin blade dipped in hot water and wiped dry between slices, pressing straight down rather than dragging so the cut face stays sharp.
Lay each slice flat on a cold plate rather than upright, since a fluid centre slumps within a minute on its edge while a slice on its side holds its geometry and lets the ganache pool where you can see it. Keep the accompaniment cold and minimal: barely sweetened whipped cream or a small quenelle of fiordilatte gelato to one side, and a few whole toasted hazelnuts. Sauces are redundant, since the cake arrives with its own.
Professional Technique
The technique that defines this cake is the manipulation of the set point of the filling. Nutella alone is a palm oil and sugar emulsion that is firm at 68°F (20°C), which is why a plain spoonful never gives a flowing centre in a cooled cake. Cream adds water and milk fat, hazelnut oil adds a fat that stays liquid far below room temperature, and the 70 percent chocolate contributes cocoa butter for gloss. The resulting ganache sits at the edge of flowing at 68°F (20°C), and that is the state you are locking in.
The second technique is thermal separation. The disc goes in frozen while the batter around it is at 68°F (20°C), and that gap buys roughly 20 minutes of undisturbed baking before the filling moves at all, by which time a set wall has formed. The third is knowing where to test: in any cake with a liquid inclusion the geometric centre reports the temperature of the filling rather than the state of the crumb, so a skewer 1 1/2 inches (4 cm) in from the wall is the only honest measurement.
Texture and Moisture Control
Two textures coexist and each answers to a different variable. The crumb is governed by creaming time and by where you stop the mixer: six minutes of creaming and a bare 30 seconds of flour incorporation give the fine tender interior the word soffice describes. Moisture in it comes from the milk and the eggs, and both must be at room temperature, since cold liquid makes creamed butter seize and knocks the trapped air back out. The core is governed by fat chemistry rather than by baking.
Serving temperature is therefore a texture decision rather than a matter of taste. At 68°F (20°C) the ganache flows and the crumb is soft. Below 60°F (15°C) the core thickens into a truffle and the butter turns waxy. Above 77°F (25°C) the ganache thins and soaks into the cake instead of running out of it. If the kitchen is warm and the batter looks slack, chill the filled pan 10 minutes before baking to widen the gap around the disc.
Professional Mise en Place
The only element with a long lead time is the frozen ganache disc, so make it the day before and the cake becomes an hour of work. Everything else is a matter of ingredient temperature before the mixer starts.
Equipment and tools
Springform pan, 9 inch (23 cm), with a parchment round cut to fit
Stand mixer with paddle, or hand mixer and a wide bowl
Small saucepan and a heatproof bowl for the ganache
Flat tray that fits the freezer, plus parchment
Offset spatula, fine mesh sieve, long thin slicing knife
Prepared ahead
Ganache disc shaped and frozen rigid, up to 1 week ahead, wrapped
Hazelnuts toasted and chopped, kept in a sealed jar
Flour, baking powder and salt whisked together in one bowl
Butter, eggs and milk out of the refrigerator 90 minutes before mixing
Springform buttered, lined and floured before the mixer is switched on
Service setup
Cake fully cooled, glazed no more than 30 minutes before serving
Powdered sugar dusted last, immediately before the cake leaves the kitchen
Slicing knife in a jug of hot water with a clean cloth beside it
Plates cold, never warmed, cream or gelato held in the refrigerator
Room kept below 75°F (24°C) so the core stays fluid without thinning
Chef Tips
Buy hazelnut oil rather than substituting a neutral one. Sunflower or grapeseed lowers the set point just as well but takes the hazelnut flavour of the core down with it. Toasted hazelnut oil from Piedmont costs almost nothing by the spoonful and does two jobs at once.
Toast and skin the hazelnuts yourself. Fifteen minutes at 300°F (150°C) and a brisk rub in a tea towel while warm removes the bitter skins and wakes the oils. Nuts sold ready toasted have usually sat in a warm shop for months, and a stale one on top is obvious against a filling made from good ones.
Weigh the flour if you have a scale. The gap between a lightly scooped cup and a packed one is close to 20 percent, which across 2 3/4 cups is enough to turn a soft crumb dry, and the crumb has to stay tender against a filling that adds no moisture of its own.
For a less sweet cake, drop the granulated sugar to 3/4 cup (150 g). The crumb barely notices, since its structure comes from flour and eggs, but the slice gains definition against the Nutella, which appears in three separate places on the plate.
Common Mistakes
Using plain Nutella as the core. Straight from the jar it sets firm as the cake cools and gives a sweet dense pocket rather than a flowing centre. The cream, the hazelnut oil and the chocolate are what keep the filling liquid at room temperature.
Placing the disc while it is still soft. A ganache that has only chilled sinks through the lower batter and spreads sideways during the bake, giving brown streaks and no centre. Four hours of hard freezing, and freezer to batter in under a minute.
Testing the middle with a skewer. It comes out coated every time because there is ganache under it, and the usual response is another 15 minutes, by which point the crumb is dry and the core has begun to bake. Test 1 1/2 inches (4 cm) in from the edge.
Releasing the cake too early. The centre offers no support until the crumb has firmed, and a cake turned out after five minutes will slump or split. Twenty minutes in the pan, then the collar off with the cake left on the base.
Refrigerating the finished cake. Cold turns the core into a truffle and the butter rich crumb into something hard and grainy that never fully recovers. If the kitchen is hot, cool the room rather than the cake.
Wine Pairing
Moscato d'Asti DOCG: From the same corner of Piedmont as the hazelnuts. Its low alcohol and gentle frizzante lift scrub the palate clean between mouthfuls of a very rich filling, while the peach and orange blossom aromatics sit above the gianduja rather than fighting it.
Brachetto d'Acqui DOCG: The red answer to the same question, sweet and lightly sparkling from a few miles outside Alba. Its raspberry and rose perfume gives the chocolate a fruit dimension it lacks alone, and tannin is almost absent, which is what cocoa needs.
Recioto di Soave DOCG: A Veneto white from dried Garganega, richer than the two Piedmontese bottles above. It brings candied apricot and enough acidity under the sweetness to cut the butter in the crumb, and its almond note runs alongside the toasted hazelnuts.
Vin Santo del Chianti Classico DOC: The choice when the wine should hold its own rather than refresh. Years in small barrels give dried fig, walnut and a faintly oxidative edge that mirrors the roasted side of the hazelnut, with acidity firm enough to stop the pairing turning cloying.
Malvasia di Bosa DOC: The least obvious bottle here and the best match for the glazed top. Aged oxidatively in Sardinia under a film of yeast, it carries bruised apple and almond skin with a dry nutty finish that reads against the chopped hazelnuts. Serve it around 54°F (12°C).
Storage & Reheating
Kept whole under a cake dome at room temperature, this cake is at its best for two days and good on the third. Press a piece of parchment lightly against the cut face so the exposed crumb does not dry. Do not refrigerate the whole cake: below about 60°F (15°C) the butter crystallises and the crumb turns hard and sandy without recovering, while the ganache thickens into a truffle. If the kitchen runs above 77°F (25°C), refrigerate it in an airtight container and bring it back to room temperature for at least 2 hours before serving. Individual slices freeze for up to 2 months wrapped in cling film and then foil, and should thaw for 3 hours at room temperature rather than in the microwave, which heats the core until it soaks into the crumb.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 12 slices from one 9 inch cake:
Calories: 565 kcal
Total Fat: 33 g
Saturated Fat: 15 g
Trans Fat: 0.4 g
Unsaturated Fat: 17 g
Cholesterol: 108 mg
Sodium: 165 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 60 g
Fiber: 2.5 g
Total Sugars: 35 g
Added Sugars: 32 g
Protein: 8 g
Lactose: 2.1 g
Principal micronutrients: vitamin E, magnesium, manganese, copper, phosphorus, iron
These figures are estimates and shift with the size of the slice more than with anything else. Close to half the sugar arrives with the Nutella rather than the batter. Contains gluten, dairy, eggs, tree nuts and soy lecithin.
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