Ever since I acquired Ramona Koval's Jewish Cooking Jewish Cooks, I have wanted to make Mirka Mora's Walnut Cake. The recipe comes with a charming story about Ramona's meeting with Mirka in the kitchen of her home. Mirka is a well known Melbourne artist, originally from France, and you can find out more about her fascinating life here and here.
Why wouldn't I want to make this cake - it is packed with caramel-coated walnuts! Sounds like a winner to me. Also, the outside of the cake is easy to make - everything is whizzed together in a food processor. You can find the recipe online here. Curiously, in the book, the pastry uses 90g of butter, and the filling uses 90g each of brown sugar and butter, so you may wish to substitute those measures for the online version.
The outside of this cake is a soft, tender pastry, and the filling is whole, unchopped walnuts embraced by smooth caramel laced with rum. After I egg washed my cake, I sprinkled it with castor sugar for extra crunch before putting it in the oven. In the book, instead of putting castor sugar on top, they sprinkled the top of the cooled cake with icing sugar.
This is a simple but delightful cake for which I received plenty of compliments. Definitely give it a try if this is your kind of cake!
