Italian Soft Nutella Cake with a Molten Center | Torta Soffice alla Nutella con Cuore Fondente

Aug 18

11 min read

Updated: Sep 14

Torta Soffice alla Nutella con Cuore Fondente (Italian Soft Nutella Cake with a Molten Center)

This is the restaurant version, baked in individual moulds to order and carried to the table within a minute of leaving the oven. The bake is deliberately short, nine to eleven minutes at high heat, and the centre is not cooked at all: it is a frozen sphere of Nutella that has had just enough time to melt while the outside sets. Cut it while it is still too hot to touch and the middle pours out. Wait ten minutes and it is a good small cake with no centre left.

Everything is organised around that window. The batter is lighter than a whole cake batter, made with melted butter and whipped whole eggs, so it sets fast at the edges without drying. The moulds are dusted with cocoa rather than flour so they release cleanly and leave no pale ring, and the oven runs at 400°F (205°C), hot enough to build a skin before the heat reaches the middle. Once the moulds are filled and chilled, the dessert is eleven minutes of oven time and thirty seconds of plating.

Yield: 6 individual tortini. Prep: 30 minutes. Freeze the cores: 3 hours. Bake: 11 minutes. Rest: 1 minute. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: dolce al piatto. Region: Piedmont and the Italian restaurant repertoire.

The Story

The hot cake with a liquid middle is a recent idea and its paternity is contested. Michel Bras served his biscuit de chocolat coulant at Laguiole in 1981, built around a frozen ganache centre placed inside a sponge, and Jean Georges Vongerichten arrived at a similar result in New York in 1987 by pulling an underbaked chocolate sponge from the oven early. The two techniques differ in principle, one relying on a frozen insert and the other on deliberate underbaking, and both are still in use.

Italy adopted the format quickly and renamed it tortino dal cuore caldo, and through the 1990s it appeared on the dessert list of almost every trattoria wanting to look current. Piedmontese kitchens made the obvious substitution at once, replacing the dark ganache with Nutella, which was already in the storeroom and tasted of the region rather than of France. Purists in Alba will say a tortino made from the jar is not serious pastry. In a home kitchen the argument collapses, because Nutella is a stable manufactured emulsion that behaves identically every time, which is what you want when the margin between success and failure is ninety seconds of oven time.

Ingredients

For the frozen Nutella cores

Nutella, 3/4 cup (225 g)
Heavy cream, 2 tbsp (30 ml)
Flaky sea salt, 1/4 tsp (1.5 g)

For the tortino batter

Unsalted butter, melted and cooled, 7 tbsp (100 g)
Dark chocolate 60 percent, chopped, 2 1/2 oz (70 g)
Large eggs, at room temperature, 3
Large egg yolk, 1
Granulated sugar, 1/3 cup (70 g)
All purpose flour, 1/2 cup (65 g)
Unsweetened cocoa powder, 2 tbsp (12 g)
Pure vanilla extract, 1 tsp (5 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1/4 tsp (1.5 g)

For the moulds

Unsalted butter, soft, 2 tbsp (28 g)
Unsweetened cocoa powder, 2 tbsp (12 g)

For finishing

Powdered sugar, 1 tbsp (8 g)
Toasted hazelnuts, roughly chopped, 3 tbsp (25 g)
Fiordilatte gelato, 6 small scoops

Preparation

Freezing the Nutella cores

Stir the Nutella with the cream and the flaky salt until it loosens and turns glossy. Divide it into six portions of about 2 tablespoons each onto a parchment lined tray and freeze for 30 minutes until firm enough to handle. Roll each into a rough ball between cold palms, return them to the tray and freeze at least a further 2 1/2 hours. A core that is not frozen through will collapse into the batter and leave you with a plain small chocolate cake.

Preparing the moulds

Brush six ramekins or metal dariole moulds of about 5 fl oz (150 ml) generously with soft butter, working the brush upward in vertical strokes so the tortino has a direction to climb. Spoon in cocoa powder, turn the mould to coat every surface and knock out the excess. Cocoa rather than flour is right here, because flour leaves a pale ring on a dark dessert. Set the moulds on a tray and refrigerate so the butter firms before the batter goes in.

Melting the chocolate and butter

Melt the chopped dark chocolate with the melted butter over a bain marie or in short bursts in a microwave, stirring often, and stop the moment the last pieces disappear. Overheated chocolate seizes and turns grainy and there is no recovery from it. Leave the mixture until it is barely warm to the back of a finger, around 95°F (35°C). Hotter than that and it begins to cook the eggs when the two are combined.

Whipping the eggs and sugar

Whisk the whole eggs, the extra yolk and the sugar at high speed for 4 to 5 minutes until the mixture has tripled in volume, turned pale and holds a ribbon on the surface for three seconds when the whisk is lifted. This is the only lift the tortino gets, since there is no baking powder anywhere in the recipe, and it is what allows a batter this rich to rise rather than sit flat in the mould.

Folding the batter together

Pour the barely warm chocolate down the side of the bowl and fold it in with wide slow strokes, cutting through the middle and turning the bowl a quarter each time. Sift the flour, cocoa and salt over the surface and fold again until no dry streaks remain, adding the vanilla at the end. Stop as soon as it is uniform. Every stroke past that point deflates the foam you spent five minutes building, and a deflated batter will not rise around the core.

Filling the moulds around the core

Spoon batter into each chilled mould to a depth of about 3/4 inch (2 cm). Take the cores from the freezer, press one into the centre of each and push it down until it is just submerged, keeping it clear of the sides. Cover with the remaining batter, stopping 1/2 inch (12 mm) below the rim, and level the top. At this stage the filled moulds hold in the refrigerator for up to 8 hours or in the freezer for a month, which is what makes this practical for a dinner party.

Baking at high heat

Heat the oven to 400°F (205°C) with a rack in the middle and put the tray in without opening the door again for the first 8 minutes. Bake 9 to 11 minutes from the refrigerator, or 13 to 14 minutes from frozen. The tortini are ready when the top has set into a matte dome with a slight crack at the edge but the very centre still wobbles when the tray is nudged. A fully firm top means the core has already gone.

Turning out and serving immediately

Let the moulds stand for exactly 1 minute, no longer, so the outer wall firms just enough to hold. Run a small knife around the rim, set a warm plate over the mould, invert the two together and lift the mould away with a small twist. If a tortino sticks, a patch of the mould was missed with the butter. Dust, garnish and send the plate at once, because this dessert has a working life of about four minutes from the oven.

Plating

Plate onto warm plates, the opposite of what a cooled cake wants, because everything here depends on the centre staying liquid for the walk from the kitchen. Set the tortino slightly off centre so there is room for the gelato, and do not let the two touch: a scoop resting against a dessert at 175°F (80°C) will be a puddle before it reaches the table.

Dust very lightly with powdered sugar through a fine mesh sieve held high, and do it at the plate, since sugar on a hot surface melts into a damp grey film within a minute. Scatter the hazelnuts in a small arc on the plate rather than over the dome, where they slide off as soon as the cake is cut. Tell the guests to open it immediately. This is the one dessert where the kitchen is entitled to hurry the table.

Professional Technique

The mechanism is a race between two heat fronts and the recipe is written so the outside wins. Heat from a 400°F (205°C) oven reaches the wall of the mould at once and coagulates the egg proteins against it within three or four minutes, building a shell. Meanwhile the frozen core is absorbing energy to reach 32°F (0°C) and then to change phase, which consumes a great deal of heat with no rise in temperature. It acts as a thermal sink and protects itself while the shell forms.

The aeration method is the second point. There is no chemical leavening in the recipe: lift comes entirely from a foam of whole eggs and one extra yolk whipped to the ribbon stage, held in a protein film that expands in the oven and then sets, which is why the folding must be brief and the chocolate barely warm. The third point is the one minute rest before unmoulding, since straight from the oven the wall is soft enough to tear under its own weight and sixty seconds of carryover firms it just enough to hold.

Texture and Moisture Control

Three textures have to land at once: a thin set crust, a narrow band of barely baked cake beneath it, and a liquid centre. The crust comes from the buttered and cocoa dusted mould and the high oven heat. The band of soft cake is the margin for error, which is why the batter stops 1/2 inch (12 mm) below the rim: a shallower wall around the core gives a wider margin than a thick one.

Moisture is controlled almost entirely by oven time and the difference between right and wrong is under two minutes. At 9 minutes from the refrigerator the crust may still be tacky and the tortino collapses when turned out; at 13 it has set into fudge. The cue that matters is the top: matte and domed with the faintest wobble at the middle and no shine left. Starting temperature must be consistent too, since a tray holding both chilled and frozen moulds produces both failures at once.

Professional Mise en Place

Everything is done in advance and only the oven is left for service. Filled moulds keep 8 hours in the refrigerator and a month in the freezer, so build them earlier in the day and do nothing until the plates are cleared.

Equipment and tools

Six ramekins or dariole moulds, about 5 fl oz (150 ml) each
Pastry brush for the butter and a fine mesh sieve for cocoa and sugar
Stand mixer or hand whisk with a wide bowl for the ribbon stage
Heatproof bowl for the bain marie and a flexible spatula
Parchment lined tray that fits the freezer

Prepared ahead

Nutella cores rolled and frozen solid, up to 1 month ahead
Moulds buttered, cocoa dusted and chilled, the morning of service
Moulds filled with batter and core, refrigerated up to 8 hours ahead
Hazelnuts toasted and chopped, held in a sealed jar
Gelato softened for 5 minutes in the refrigerator before scooping

Service setup

Oven brought to 400°F (205°C) a full 20 minutes before the tortini go in
Plates warming, the opposite of what a cooled cake requires
Timer set for 9 minutes, the tray checked every 30 seconds after that
Sugar, sieve, hazelnuts and scooped gelato lined up before the timer sounds
Spoons already on the table so nothing delays the first cut

Chef Tips

Bake one tortino on its own as a test before the guests sit down. Ovens vary by as much as 25°F (14°C) from their dial and this is not a dessert where you can discover that on the plate. One sacrificial mould gives you the exact time for your oven, and you write it on the recipe.

Butter ceramic ramekins twice. Ceramic grips far harder than metal, and a second coat applied after the first has firmed is close to insurance. Work the brush upward in straight lines both times, since a mould buttered in circles gives the batter nothing to climb.

Freeze the filled moulds rather than refrigerating them if the dinner is unpredictable. Frozen tortini take 13 to 14 minutes instead of 9 to 11 and are more forgiving, because the extra frozen mass widens the window in which the centre is still liquid.

Add the pinch of flaky salt to the cores and do not skip it. Nutella is sweet to the point of being one dimensional when hot, and the salt gives the molten centre a defined edge the hazelnut needs.

Common Mistakes

Opening the oven door during the first 8 minutes. The rush of cool air stalls the rise at the moment the egg foam is expanding, and the tortini sink and never recover. Set the timer and do all your checking through the glass.

Overbaking by two minutes. This ruins most attempts, because a firm confident looking top is precisely the sign that the core has already cooked. Pull the tray while the very centre still wobbles.

Folding until the batter is smooth and glossy. There is no baking powder here and every unnecessary stroke collapses the foam doing all the work. Fold until the streaks disappear and then put the spatula down.

Pouring hot chocolate into the whipped eggs. Anything above about 105°F (40°C) sets the egg protein on contact and leaves fine cooked threads through the batter. Cool it to barely warm and pour it down the side of the bowl.

Letting the tortini stand in the moulds. Three or four minutes of carryover heat finishes the centre as surely as more oven time. One minute, then invert, then straight to the table on a warm plate.

Wine Pairing

Recioto della Valpolicella DOCG: The reference pairing for a hot chocolate dessert. Dried Corvina grapes give black cherry and dried fig concentration with sweetness high enough to stay level with the molten Nutella, while the soft tannin picks up the cocoa in the batter. Serve at 61°F (16°C).

Moscato di Scanzo DOCG: A rare sweet red from a tiny area near Bergamo, air dried for a month before pressing. Its rose petal and dried strawberry perfume works by contrast rather than by matching, throwing a floral lift across a dessert that is otherwise all depth.

Montefalco Sagrantino Passito DOCG: The most structured option, for a dessert at the end of a long meal. Sagrantino carries the highest tannin of any Italian grape, and in the passito version that grip sits under real sweetness, which lets it handle the 60 percent chocolate without either side giving way.

Colli Orientali del Friuli Picolit DOCG: The white alternative, delicate enough that it should only be poured when the gelato is on the plate. Picolit is honeyed and floral with fine acidity rather than mass, so it plays against the cold fiordilatte more than against the hot centre.

Ramandolo DOCG: From steep terraces in the far north of Friuli, made from late harvested Verduzzo and unusual among sweet whites for a faint tannic grip. That grip is why it holds where softer dessert whites are swamped, and its dried apricot and bitter almond finish answers the hazelnuts.

Storage & Reheating

The advantage of this dessert is that it stores raw rather than cooked. Filled moulds keep covered in the refrigerator for up to 8 hours and in the freezer, wrapped individually in cling film, for up to 1 month with no loss of quality. Baking from frozen takes 13 to 14 minutes instead of 9 to 11 and gives a slightly wider margin, so there is no reason to thaw them first.

A baked tortino does not keep, since the centre sets within minutes and cannot be returned to the state it was in. Cool leftovers completely, cover and refrigerate for up to 2 days, and treat them as small dense chocolate cakes rather than failed tortini; they are good cold with coffee. To warm one, give it 15 seconds in a microwave at medium power or 4 minutes in a 300°F (150°C) oven. Do not freeze baked tortini, because the crust is lost and the texture turns grainy on thawing.

Nutrition

Per serving, based on 6 individual tortini:

Calories: 495 kcal
Total Fat: 31 g
Saturated Fat: 16 g
Trans Fat: 0.3 g
Unsaturated Fat: 14 g
Cholesterol: 155 mg
Sodium: 145 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 48 g
Fiber: 3 g
Total Sugars: 34 g
Added Sugars: 31 g
Protein: 8 g
Lactose: 1.3 g
Principal micronutrients: iron, magnesium, copper, vitamin E, selenium, phosphorus