Hazelnut Cake

This cake happens to be a brilliant way to use up freezer-stored egg whites. It looks wonderful: a toasty, speckled brown, bulging-sided disc. And it tastes extraordinary: a nutty, tender sponge, with the almost-stickiness of meringue and the aromatic dampness of marzipan. The amount below will probably give you leftovers, but the cake stays all-too-eatable.

I do something that dismays purists and use ready-ground nuts. If you, too, are shocked by the very idea, then you won’t need