Cakes and chocolate truffles – if you can have both, why on earth wouldn’t you?

So we came up with what might be the most delicious new style of cakes: Truffle Cakes. Each bite guarantees a little explosion of flavour and texture – soft, fluffy hero sponge layers, smooth and silken Swiss meringue buttercream (with less than half the sugar of regular buttercream), and crisp chocolate truffles filled with gooey, dangerously moreish ganaches and spreads.

Take my favourite, the Pistachio Truffle Cake. On the day it launched it outsold every other one of our 150+ cakes. And it’s easy to see why. Pistachio is having a moment and this cake showcases it in all its glorious forms: pistachio hero sponge layers, pistachio Swiss meringue buttercream – smooth and silky with nutty ground pistachios – tasting divine and looking beautiful in its speckled pistachio-green coat.

But that’s not all. We drip the most addictive of all spreads over the cake: Sicilian Crema di Pistacchio, pistachio crème. We cannot be left alone in a room with this jar. It’s that good.

Swirls of Swiss meringue buttercream in one of our signature styles are then topped with Belgian chocolate truffles, filled with pistachio crème and finished with ground pistachios.

Anyway, pistachio has had plenty of attention. There is another nut that deserves some love: the not-so-humble hazelnut.

We all know and love Nutella. It’s one of our best-selling flavours (the Nutella Ferrero Rocher Brownie Cake is a forever favourite). But, IMHO, Nutella – don’t hate me – is overrated. It’s everywhere: on crepes, pancakes, toast. I’m convinced it has such a cult following partly because white chocolate hazelnut hasn’t had a fair shot.

Think of a Kinder Bueno bar. What’s the best bit? Not the whisper-thin chocolate shell. Not the slightly pointless wafer. It’s the gooey, gorgeous, sweet and nutty white chocolate hazelnut filling.

Hazelnut is a gentle flavour. In a milk chocolate base, it gets drowned out. In a white chocolate base, it sings. Morrisons used to sell a white hazelnut spread (which we used in a Kinder-style fake bake) but sadly, it’s now discontinued.

Fear not. M&S and Dunks Cookies both make white chocolate hazelnut praline spreads and they are delightful. The M&S one is thicker and firmer – perfect stirred into warm porridge or spread over pancakes. Dunks’ spread is looser and pourable, brilliant for drizzling over ice cream or using as a drip on cakes.

Our Hazelnut Truffle Cake has chocolate hero sponge layers, chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream (it tastes like chocolate ice cream at room temperature), a glossy white chocolate hazelnut drip, and swirls of buttercream crowned with milk chocolate truffles filled with white chocolate hazelnut spread and ground hazelnuts. It’s time to move on from Nutella. Trust us.

And of course, no Truffle Cake line-up would be complete without Biscoff. Biscoff is the flavour trend that simply refuses to die – and honestly, I’m not mad about it. There’s something about those slightly cinnamony, caramelly notes from the world’s most iconic hairdresser biscuit that still keep me hooked. Enter the Biscoff Truffle Cake: vanilla hero sponge, Swiss meringue buttercream, Biscoff spread drip, buttercream swirls, and milk chocolate truffles filled with Biscoff spread and crushed biscuits. Biscoffable.

I’m now so hungry writing this that I can’t keep talking about cakes I don’t currently have within arm’s reach. Fortunately, there is a jar of pistachio crème in the cupboard. And a tablespoon. TTYL.

Love,

Reshmi xoxo