Chocolate-Hazelnut Meringue Cradle Cake

With its unusual assembly and even more unusual name, Meringue Cradle Cake is one of my favorites. You make a meringue with nuts and chocolate, create a “cradle” out of it, and fill it with cake batter. Genius. It’s not surprising that the Meringue Cradle Cake was the third-place winner of the 1953 Pillsbury Bake-Off and then discovered by me among the pages of Pillsbury’s 4th Grand National 100 Prize Winning Recipes (1953). The original was baked in