Walnut cake

We spent New Year's Eve in the company of friends. Everybody was asked to bring a dish. I prepared two desserts, with expert help. One of them was a walnut cake. A friend gave me the recipe when we were students. It's a very easy recipe and it always meets with succes.
It's the first thing I baked in my new oven and it came out wonderfully.

For the cake:

4 eggs
200 g sugar
250 g flour
1 tsp baking powder
80 g walnuts, chopped
1 glass sunflower oil

For the topping:

2 eggs
150 g sugar
125 g soft butter
150 g walnuts, chopped + a few whole walnuts for decoration
1 tbsp rum

Beat egg yolks and sugar into a creamy mixture.
Mix baking powder into the flour and add this to the egg yolks.
Add chopped walnuts and oil and mix well.
Beat egg whites and add them to the mixture.
Grease a cake tin and add the mixture.
Bake for 30-40 min at 180° C.

Prepare the topping: mix eggs, sugar and butter into a smooth cream. Then add chopped walnuts and rum.
Let the cake cool, then add the topping on top and/or in the middle.
Decorate with a few whole walnuts.

Notes
The cake was a little dry, maybe 200 g flour is enough.
The topping is a big quantity and very rich, so you might also halve the quantities and only add it on top or only in the middle.

Red pepper and walnut paste

Last month, when my friends came to dinner, we prepared this paste and served it on small toasts as a starter. You can also use it as a sauce to dip vegetables in. It's another Claudia Roden recipe, called muhammara.

Serves 6

2 red peppers
red chili paste
1 slice of bread without crust
90 g peeled walnuts
1/2 garlic clove, crushed
juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cumin
olive oil

Roast red peppers in the oven at 200°C for 30 min. Turn them once. Let them cool in a plastic bag, then peel them and remove stem and seeds.
Blend all ingredients into a paste using a blender.
Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary.

The walnuts were deftly and painstakingly peeled by hand using Mono Pico, a very simple device which my cousin brought me from the Museum of Modern Art in New York.


We forgot to take pictures of the result - which was delicious. So instead a few pics showing the view from the kitchen in the evening.

Tishpishti - Almond, walnut & orange cake with syrup

Birdies are starting to gather on the crane outside my window. It seems early for that. Last year I saw loads in October.

My aunt and I cooked together for our friends from Curaçao. I made the dessert and decided to try another recipe from Claudia Roden's 'The book of Jewish food'. It's a sephardic recipe from Turkey.

Serves 8-10

4 eggs, beaten
150 g walnuts, finely chopped or ground
100 g ground almonds
200 g sugar
juice and rind of 1 orange
2 tsp cinnamon

For the syrup:
200 g sugar
250 ml water
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp rose water

Make the syrup first: Mix sugar, water and lemon juice and bring to the boil. Lower the heat and let it boil on medium heat for 10-15 min. Add rose water and let the syrup cool.
Mix all ingredients for the cake.
Cover a pie dish with tin foil or baking foil, grease with (sunflower) oil and pour in the cake mixture.
Bake the cake for 1hr at 180° C until golden brown. Transfer it immediately to a dish, remove foil and cut it in slices. Pour the syrup over the cake while it's still warm. Turn the slices around after 30 min in order to distribute the syrup evenly.

Notes
This is a very refined cake with subtle flavours. Claudia Roden advises to make it several hours in advance so the syrup can soak in properly.
Make sure the cake is baked enough before taking it out of the oven. It's a very liquid dough so it takes a while.

Here's the view from my cousin's terrace: