You will need a nutcracker, a food processor or very powerful blender, and either a 24-well mini-muffin tin or 12-well standard muffin pan for this recipe.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Using the wrapper from the butter you’ve melted (see below) grease a standard 12-well or 24-mini well muffin tin. You will likely need more butter. If you have paper muffin cups and prefer using them, go ahead.

Melt the butter in small saucepan. Turn off heat and allow to cool while you prepare the batter.

If your hazelnuts aren’t shelled, do so.

Tip the shelled hazelnuts, white sugar, and brown sugar into the food processor and pulverize until ground. Tip into a bowl.

Add the eggs, almond extract, rum or other liquor, and butter to the bowl. Stir to combine.

Add flour, salt, and baking powder to bowl. Stir to combine.

For 12-well muffin tin, use 2 tablespoons batter per well. For mini-muffin tin, use 1 tablespoon batter per well.

Bake cakes 12 minutes for 12-well tin, 10 minutes for 24-well tin. Muffins will not brown or look “done,” but a toothpick will come out clean.

Remove from oven and place on cooling rack. Allow to cool at 10 minutes before unmolding.

Hazelnut cakes keep at room temperature, wrapped, 2-3 days. Tip them into a Ziploc and freeze for 2-3 months.

Notes:

Save the wrapper from the butter to grease your muffin tin.

I use brown sugars interchangeably, but used light for this recipe. If your brown sugar is clumped, microwave it, but be careful as it can get hot.

Rum can be replaced with brandy, Applejack, Calvados, Armagnac, Amaretto or Frangelico.

Tanis’s recipe–the original, which is well worth having–calls for 3/4 cup whole unblanched almonds.