Double Walnut Cinnamon Cake

Last week a colleague of mine brought 200g of walnuts to school and asked me to make a cake with them to share with the department. Specifically, she had asked me to make some brownies that were “not very sweet,” but I don’t mess with my Grandma’s brownie recipe, so I told her that wasn’t possible, but I was happy to make a cake for everyone provided I could choose a recipe myself. 

Immediately my mind went to a beautiful banana walnut cake that I used to make from Kim Boyce's Good to the Grain; however, I had had to downsize the book a while ago, and the recipe got lost in one of my moves. What I had especially loved about that cake was that it called for a tremendous amount of walnuts, and most of them had been toasted and then ground to make up part of the flour quotient in the batter, making for an intensely nutty flavour and texture. So since I couldn’t find the recipe, I decided to adapt a vanilla cake recipe from the internet into something close. I have also been interested in baking without eggs lately, because many people at work don’t eat eggs, so I chose an eggless vanilla cake recipe to work from. And since I had no overripe bananas at home, I chose to lean into the walnuts and cut the bananas altogether.

I was very happy with the result. I suggest anyone who tries this recipe is very careful to use fresh (as opposed to stale) walnuts. There are a lot of walnuts in this recipe, and very little else for flavourings, because I wanted to bring out the walnut flavour, so it’s really important that you use fresh walnuts, and toast them to a deep golden.

Double Walnut Cinnamon Cake

Ingredients:

• 125 g walnuts, toasted and ground to a fine powder
• 75 g walnuts, toasted and roughly chopped
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 6 tbsp tapioca flour or corn flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1-2 tbsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup melted butter
• 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 cup milk or water
• 2 tbsp white vinegar
• 2 tbsp vanilla

Directions:

1. Butter 6 mini bundt pans, one regular bundt pan, one loaf pan or one medium sized cake tin 
2. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C or 375 degrees F 
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, cinnamon and salt, using a sifter to add the baking powder and soda to ensure there are no lumps
4. Add the finely ground walnuts to the dry mixture
5. In a large bowl, combine the melted butter, condensed milk, regular milk or water, vinegar and vanilla, and whisk smooth
6. Whisk the dry mixture into the milk mixture in three batches, until just combined
7. Fold in the chopped walnuts
8. Bake in the preheated oven until the cake is cooked through and springs back when you touch it: 15-20 min for muffins or mini bundt cakes, or about 35-45 minutes for the large pans, checking every five minutes after 15 or 35 minutes, respectively.
9. Serve warm with tea or coffee. And if you want to make it a little more indulgent, you can serve it with lightly whipped cream or mascarpone mousse (just skip the cocoa powder).

Enjoy!