Cakes and pies – my nemesis. I love them (albeit I am generally I crave salty stuff more), but I generally suck at making them. The dough won´t rise, the cream will be too liquid-y, something´s bound to always go wrong. Unless. Unless we´re talking about my grandma´s strawberry cake which is suuuuuper easy to make, or Esther´s wonderfully simple nut cake, which is even easier. I´m not quite sure of the origin of this one, I just copied it from one of Nonna´s handwritten notes, with her insisting it´s actually her niece Esther´s recipe and not hers. I upgraded it with a simple chocolate cream, and voilá one of the easiest #guestchefseries editions ever.
Ingredients
For the cake
250g walnuts
200g sugar
6 eggs
one tbsp of flour
For the cream
100g Philadelphia cheese
50g butter
150g icing sugar
one tbsp cocoa powder
Instructions
1. Run the walnuts through a blender or grind them by hand for a couple of minutes, then mix them with the sugar, the egg yolks of the six eggs and finally the tablespoon of flour.
2. Whisk the egg whites and add them to the previous mixture while you pre-heat the oven at 180 degrees.
3. Butter a 23cm cake tray and add the mixture in. Bake for about 30-40 minutes.
4. While the cake is baking, start preparing the cream. Whisk the Philadelphia cheese and the softened butter in a small bowl and gradually add the icing sugar, mixing constantly until you reach a spreadable texture. Finally, add the cocoa powder, mix and let cool in the fridge for the time the cake is baking and cooling.
5. Once the cake is done baking, let it cool for about 20 minutes, then spread the cream over the top and sprinkle some more crushed walnuts over it.
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