Bitter-sweet Chocolate and Walnut cakes with Ganache, Cocoa Nibs and Walnut Coconut Praline

These cakes are very rich and decadent, and I find are best made with bitter-sweet dark chocolate (good quality of course) as the bitterness of the chocolate cuts back the sweetness. You could make these cakes with any nuts of your choice if your not to keen on walnuts, but the texture of the cake will remain the same. This recipe also has very little flour in it so they are extra moist and yummy, but you could easily swap the flour for ground almonds or more ground walnuts if you were looking for something gluten free. 

Bitter-sweet Chocolate and Walnut cakes with Ganache, Cocoa Nibs and Walnut Coconut Praline 

adated from The Great British Bake Off Cookbook

150g walnuts

175g 72% cocoa dark chocolate

200g castor sugar

2 tbsp plain flour

100g butter, softened

5 eggs, separated

pinch of salt

1/2 quantity chocolate ganache

1/ cup cocoa nibs (optional) 

1/2 quantity Walnut coconut praline, crushed into little pieces*

Pre-heat oven to 180c. Grease a 12 hole non-stick muffin tray. 

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler until smooth. Set aside to cool. 

place the walnuts, 50g of sugar and the flour into a food processor and blitz until it looks like fairly fine powder. Set aside. 

Place the butter in a bowl and beat until paler in color. Gradually beat in all but 2 tbsp of the remaining sugar. Continue beating untill the mixture is fluffy and pale. Add the yolks. one at a time beating well after each addition, Then fold in the melted and cooled chocolate. 

In a large clean dry bowl, whip the eggs whites with a pinch of salt untill stiff peaks. Fold into the Chocolate-Butter mixture in 3 batches. Divide the batter between the muffin holes and bake for 15 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out pretty much clean (they are nicer slightly undercooked and still really moist in the middle.) Leave to cool in the tins for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cook Completely. Once cooled, drizzle the chocolate ganache over the bottom side of each cake and top with the cocoa nibs and praline. 

*for the praline, I added about 2 tablespoons of desiccated coconut along with the walnuts.