Hazelnut Cake with Orange Marscapone & Pomegranate

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Not your usual holiday suspects...

How many times will you say it this holiday season? "I can't possibly eat one more sweet."

We feel the same way. It's impossible to go to a party without grazing on all manner of holiday cookies and desserts. In fact, they all begin to taste the same after awhile. Every single holiday treat seems to be made of some combination of  cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, butter & peppermint.

For a recent dinner party, we wanted to come up with a holiday dessert that used seasonal ingredients, but didn't taste stereotypically "holiday."  Recently one of our friendly "web-neighbors" sent us several pounds of freshly picked hazelnuts. (Thank you!) We were delighted, since they're one of our favorite nuts, and not always so easy to find outside of a tin of mixed nuts. We'd been trying to come up with new ways to use them when we decided that we'd make our own version of a hazelnut cake – of which there are as many varieties as their are cultures.

We also wanted to use one of our favorite fall fruits, the pomegranate. We can't buy enough of them while they're in season. Many people avoid them because they believe that it's difficult to remove the seeds. But we've found the simplest and most effective way. (And it doesn't include any underwater trickery or individual seed picking.) Here's our method.

And because we wanted to cut the sweetness factor, we decided against any sort of whipped cream topping or glaze. Instead, we used marscapone cheese, lightly sweetened and flavored with orange zest.

We hope you like it. We guarantee it's a refreshing, semi-sweet, seasonal alternative to holiday cookie binging.

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Hazelnut Cake with Orange Marscapone and Pomegranate Sauce.

For cake:

1 lb shelled hazelnuts

10 eggs, separated

1/2 cup sugar

3 T all purpose or cake flour

1 T hazelnut liqueur (optional.)

zest and juice of 1 orange

dash salt

For marscapone topping:

8 oz marscapone cheese

zest of 1 orange. (reserve orange for sauce.)

1/3 cup sugar (or to taste)

For pomegranate sauce:

2 pomegranates

Juice of 1 orange (use orange from marscapone topping.)

2/3 C sugar

Roast hazelnuts in 350 degree oven until they are lightly toasted but not burnt. Watch closely. The skins should almost flake off. Once toasted, place nuts in clean dishtowel and rub them together until most of the skins are removed. Grind hazelnuts in foodprocessor until finely chopped, but not paste. (Leave oven at 35o for baking the cake.)

Beat together egg yolks and sugar until creamy. Add flour, salt, liqueur, juice, zest and chopped nuts. mix until combined. In separate bowl, whip egg whites until stiff peaks are formed. Fold eggs whites gently into other mixture. Do not overmix. The air in the beaten whites are the only leavening agent in the cake.

Spoon batter into two 9 inch buttered and floured cake pans. (This will result in one extra cake, which freezes well for a later dessert.)

Bake at 350 for approx 25-30 minutes or until knife inserted into center of cake comes out clean.

While baking, make marscapone topping and sauce.

Beat together marscapone, zest and sugar until smooth. Add sugar to taste, but should not be too sweet.

For sauce, seed two pomegranates over bowl. Pour off juice into shallow pan. Reserve half of the seeds for garnish, and juice remaining seeds into the shallow pan by pressing through a wire strainer with the back of a wooden spoon. Add sugar, and juice of one orange (use orange from the marscapone zesting) to pan and heat until boiling. Reduce to simmer and reduce liquid by about half.

To serve, plate small sliver of cake, add dollop of marscapone topping, drizzle with pomegranate sauce, and garnish with pomegranate seeds.