Mini Piedmontois - or Eric Lanlard's hazelnut mousse cake in small

I am pretty sure that it was about half a year ago, that I fall in love with this cake. I never miss a chapter of Eric Lanlard's show, because you can learn so much! Not to mention the interesting background informations about the classic desserts. And this one? Well, already its name: Piedmontois, doesn't sound elegant? Of course might have already figured out that it is all about hazelnuts! After all the best hazelnuts come from the Piemont! The cake is made of two layers of hazelnut biscuit with a hazelnut omusse in the middle and covered with a gooey chocolate glaze. Though there is a hazelnut mousse cake on the blog already, but this is so different! I really like, that the basis for the mousse is crème pâtissière, butter and Italian meringue, because I haven't tried this kind of mousse yet. Though I already prepared crème pâtissière based mousse but with the addition of gelatine and cream. My favourite type is still the pâté à bombe based, followed by the Italian meringue-cream kind because that is just so light, however there is even one more that is a lot lighter, even though it contains chocolate. It is Pierre Hermé's gorgeous dark chocolate mousse. Anyway, now back to the cake! I decided to make six small ones instead a big cake. Originally it is coated with milk chocolate, but as I am not really a milk chocolate kind of person anymore, I used dark. Luckily! Because it seemed to be a little too sweet to my taste, therefore next time I would reduce the amount of sugar. The mousse contains quite a lot of butter, but still it is amazingly light and fluffy! However do not serve it directly from the fridge, but let it stand for about half an hour on room temperature, it will be just perfect that way! I think this is anyway a general rule with cakes, not to mention that any cake is better the next day. This one here is perfect for those who are addicted to milk chocolate bars with hazelnuts!

Ingredients:
based on a recipe by Eric Lanlard
for the hazelnut biscuit:
5 egg whites
200 g roasted, ground hazelnut
100 g sugar
50 g flour
for the Italian meringue:
180 g sugar
90 g egg white
for the hazelnut mousse:
2 egg yolks
50 g sugar (now i would only use 20 g)
25 g corn starch
125 ml milk
25 g butter
1/2 vanilla pod
150 g soft butter
50 g hazelnut paste (see details below, used 90 g instead)
Italian meringue
for the glaze:
100 g corasly chopped hazelnut
100 g butter
200 g milk chocolate (used 60% cocoa dark chocolate) 

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Beat egg whites with a pinch of salt to firm peaks, then stir in the ground hazelnut, sugar and flour. In case you want to bake a 25 cm round cake, then pipe two circles onto a baking sheet, each 25 cm and bake for 20 minutes. Then prepare the Italian meringue. Bring sugar with 125 ml water to the boil and cook until it reaches 120°C. Add syrup onto the almost beaten egg whites in a thin strain and beat until firm. Bring milk with the vanilla seeds and pod to the boil and pour it onto the egg yolk-sugar-corn starch mixture. Put it back to the stove and cook until it thickens, then stir in the butter and let it cool.

The original recipe calls for hazelnut praline, however in the show he used some hazelnut spread, if I remember it well, therefore I prepared that myself. You can also prepare the hazelnuts as a praline and then prepare the spread in a food processer with the molten chocolate. Roast 100 g hazelnuts and then process with 100 g of molten chocolate and 1 tablespoon oil. One tablespoon is for your sweet tooth, the rest is ready to mix it together with the previously prepared crème pâtissière. Then stir in soft butter and fold in the Italian meringue. Cut the baked biscuits in form and pour the mousse on top and cover with the other biscuit. Chill for at least an hour. For the glaze melt butter and chocolate, then stir in the hazelnut and pour it over the cake. I used the double portion of the glaze for 6 mini cakes.