(For past birthdays, read about Drunken Devil’s food cupcakes, Kitchen Sink cookies, Chocolate Brownie cake with homemade caramel, and a Chocolate and Coffee Mousse Cake)

This year, things have changed a bit for me. If you’ve been reading along, you’ll remember I started a new site, Food Blogger on a Diet, to talk about healthy living. It’s related to how I let my body degrade despite my good intentions. But good intentions only count if they’re accompanied by a lot of work. So, the past 7 months I’ve been exercising, eating better, and I’ve lost quite a bit of weight. 2011 has turned into a great year for me.

I feel much better, and though I’m not avoiding sweets altogether (I need my gelato!), I tend not to keep much in the house as I find it greatly helps me appreciate those times when I do eat sweets, and reduce just-because-it’s-in-the-house eating. That, combined with the fact that I work from home and don’t want an entire cake/pie/dessert best suited for 12-14 people sitting in my kitchen, means I wasn’t looking forward to this year’s birthday cake as much as before.

Enter my little Le Creuset mini cocotte. I love this! And the blue color is so pretty. It makes me happy. And today it made me a little cake.

There are so many things I love about this cake, and soon I’ll share a recipe, but I want to keep tweaking it. But what I can tell you about this cake are two great things: it has no oil, butter, or refined sugar in it. And I cooked it in the microwave.

I wasn’t intending on cooking it in the microwave but I wanted to experiment with the batter and it tasted just like I wanted, so why pre-heat the oven for 20 minutes and cook the cake for 10 when 2 minutes in the microwave does just fine? 

If you feel like experimenting yourself, here’s a bit about this cake. It’s full of ingredients I already had lying around my house and am eating on a regular basis – greek yogurt (2% but I’m curious to try it again with 0%), cacao, almonds I ground up, honey, and even a splash of almond milk. I used 1/2 an egg and just 2 T. of flour, though in a future version I’d like to eliminate the flour altogether. Add a pinch of baking soda, and it’s ready to go. After, I wanted to top it with something a little sweeter, and I made a quick chocolate ganache with honey instead of white sugar (and yes, a little butter).

That was just perfect.

If you could make a cake just for one, what would you put in it?

---
Related Articles at Ms. Adventures in Italy:

• Drunken Devil’s Food Espresso Cupcakes and Happy Birthday
• Flourless Nutella Chocolate Cake Recipe for World Nutella Day 2011
• Chocolate Brownie Birthday Cake with Homemade Caramel and Pistachios Recipe

Happy World Nutella Day! Five years ago, a little idea in my head grew into a big idea, loved by thousands of fans and bloggers alike. Michelle from Bleeding Espresso has been my co-host for the past 4 years and we have loved the response! 2,000 fans on Twitter @NutellaDay, almost 20,000 fans on Facebook – we love you!

How are you participating in World Nutella Day? I can’t wait to see what you make (more information on participating) – be sure to check back on Monday, February 7th, for the global round-up on our sites.

Not sure if Nutella is your thing? Check out how to use it in more than 500 Nutella recipes. Or make your own (about 20 recipes and counting!) Check out the Nutella Spice Cake my co-host Michelle at Bleeding Espresso cooked up!

If you’re interested in writing an article about it for a newspaper or magazine, check our Press page. And please let us know when it’s published!

On to my contribution for World Nutella Day this year…

After 5 years of collecting hundreds of Nutella recipes, sometimes I find it hard to find inspiration (perhaps everything’s been done?) but I’m so glad I made this cake. I have been obsessed recently with liquid center cakes, and chocolate cakes that are part-brownie and part-custard, dense but not fudgy, and while this cake doesn’t have a liquid center, it has a texture that is completely satisfying and rich. Of course the Nutella adds that special something! And there’s so few ingredients, and it’s gluten free, so you should be able to bring things together in no time!

My other half gave this cake a very solid 10 out of 10! It has moved up the list on my go-to cakes and I know I’ll be making it again…soon. Next time I make it I might add cinnamon or hot peperoncino pepper for an added kick.

Flourless Nutella Chocolate Cake Recipe

Note: Below the recipe is a pic showing how the batter looked during various points of preparration. Getting an electronic scale is one of the best investments you can make for your kitchen. In case you don’t have one, you can convert the grams in this recipe to ounces with Google. Credit where credit’s due: David Lebovitz’s Chocolate Cake heavily inspired me.

200g unsalted butter, cut into chunks
100g dark chocolate (I used Venchi 56%)
200g Nutella
100g white sugar
6 eggs, separated
1 t. instant coffee or espresso powder

What are you making for World Nutella Day?

Below, some checks for while you’re making the cake, from top-left to clockwise: with both chocolates combined (step 3), beaten with the egg yolks (step 5), final batter poured into the springform pan (step 8), fresh out of the oven (step 9)!

---
Related Articles at Ms. Adventures in Italy:

• World Nutella Day Celebrates 5th Anniversary on February 5th
• Vote for World Nutella Day on Technorati’s WTF
• 2011 Year in Review in Pictures

And just because we could, and we’re in that funky period where both gelato and cioccolata calda, hot chocolate, are both acceptable and desirable, we ordered a cioccolata fondente con panna – dark hot chocolate with whipped cream. Delicious.(Ok, so we didn’t finish the hot chocolate, but we tried).

Then I was in a sugar coma for the rest of the evening.

Would you have gone for a double-header? Gelato and hot chocolate, or two gelati or two hot chocolate?

---
Related Articles at Ms. Adventures in Italy:

• Tour del Gelato: Chocolat a Milano
• Tour del Gelato: Choco Cult a Milano
• Join the Tour del Gelato!!

“Milk or Dark Chocolate?”

Any email that has that as the subject line is bound to make for an interesting read.

And when the mail is coming from someone working at Venchi Chocolate, that makes it that much better! When I was contacted by someone working at Venchi, who is also a reader of my blog (grazie mille, Sabrina!), I was excited as it’s a brand I know well living in the north of Italy since they are from Piedmont. You may have also seen them in the major airports of Italy, but I enjoy their little store just steps from the Duomo in Milan.

I tasted Venchi on my first trip to Torino in 2005, several months before they had the Winter Olympics there.

At the time we were newlyweds, and I lived in Pavia, a small town about 30 minutes south of Milan. Looking back, the time we spent there was very happy but a true test to any couple, especially a new one. We had no personal transportation other than bicycles, and we lived far from the city center. Each morning I rode my bicycle (uphill, naturally) to the train station, so I could make the commute to the opposite part of Milan in the north. My commute sometimes would take 3-3.5 hours per day, and when I arrived back in Pavia in the evening usually the entire city was already shut down.

We therefore looked to the train system to take us on a little excursion when we could get away, and one of our first was Torino, Turin.

So when we arrived in Turin and saw all the construction that was being done for the 2006 Olympics, we were disappointed but still glad not to be in Pavia for the moment. We consoled ourselves by escaping the cold and getting cioccolata calda, hot chocolate and eating all the gianduja, hazelnut chocolate we could find. Turin, being in Piedmont has a ton of chocolatiers there – and I found Venchi everywhere.

Now I can find Venchi closer to home – I sometimes buy their Caramel “Unico” bars when I need a caramel fix (most Italian chocolate doesn’t really feature caramel), and I like their no-sugar added line (especially the cremini) for some sugar-sensitive relatives.

So when I received my little care package, I documented it carefully, smelled everything, and immediately thought of sharing the experience with you.

In my package there were some things new to me, like:

• Chocaviar – what I thought would be pieces of cacao nibs covered in chocolate, is actually much better and smoother – 90% pure chocolate covered in extra dark chocolate. I prefer this to the crunchy nibs, and it was hands-down my favorite thing in the basket. I can see this being a bit of an addiction. I mean, really – someone come get the rest of this container from me.
• Cremacacao spread – hazelnut chocolate spread – their version of Nutella which I liked but found a bit difficult to spread because it’s so cold here, so I had to go with a spoon!
• Cuba – in the shape of a cigar, naturally, when unwrapped it reveals a long chocolate “cigar” that has a solid center of hazelnut chocolate and is covered in dark chocolate. Its size means it’s to share!
• some little packaged chocolates and some bars of extra dark chocolate that I have earmarked for some baking experiments for the new year.

Want Venchi for yourself?

A small selection of Venchi chocolate is available on Amazon.com – nothing on Amazon.it yet. A quick search finds some of it on Chocolate.com, too. Or you can buy directly on the website Venchi.it – it looks like they ship worldwide, but I haven’t experimented with it myself.

Wait, you didn’t think that was all, did you? Of course I’m going to share Venchi with you!!

Venchi Italian chocolates selection for one reader

I hand-picked your selection and it’s a little different from mine, and I headed to the Venchi store near the Duomo in Milan to pick it up this weekend. Yes, it was snowing. While I was there, there were boxes everywhere as the staff worked furiously to ready shipments just in time for Christmas.

This won’t get there in time for Christmas, but just the same, you’ll get some great stuff for the new year. Here’s what’s included (no gift-wrapped box like I received, sorry):

• A decorative, re-usable Cioccolato Venchi tin with 50g of extra dark and milk chocolate squares inside
• Chocaviar – Chocolate caviar (40g) – bits of 90% chocolate covered in extra dark chocolate (75%)
• Three (3) 45g chocolate bars – Extra dark chocolate 75% with hot pepper (peperoncino) – gluten free, Extra dark chocolate 85%, and Extra milk chocolate (gluten free)

To win, leave a comment here on this post, answering this question:

What’s your favorite article you’ve read on Ms. Adventures in Italy, and why?

Did you like the how-to on aperitivo? My travel photos from India? My chocolate dessert recipes or my behind-the scenes looks into Italian food? Tell me in the comments!

The details: One comment per person – the email address associated with your comment must be valid. You do not need to leave your email address in the comment body itself.

I’ll pick a winner on December 25th from the comments using a random number generator, and I’ll make arrangements to send the winner the package the first week of January – this way you’ll have something to look forward to in the new year!

I’ll ship this worldwide, but please get informed yourself if your country has duty or customs problems with chocolate – any taxes or customs will be your responsibility. If the reader does not reply to my winner email in 5 days from being contacted, I will select another winner.

Comment away!

Are you a fan of Ms. Adventures in Italy on Facebook?

Disclosure: I received the gift package from Venchi with no strings attached – they did not ask me to blog about it, nor am I being compensated for this post. The products in the giveaway were purchased with my own money.

---
Related Articles at Ms. Adventures in Italy:

• Happy Holidays & My Christmas Tree
• A Wedding in Tuscany
• Introducing Ferrero Pocket Espresso to Go: the summer Pocket Coffee