My kitchen cabinets are full, for two main reasons. First, my kitchen – although not tiny – is too small for my extensive cooking and dish-collecting. Second, my cabinets seem to be crammed full of random things that I don’t remember buying, yet are too expensive to simply toss out.
One of these things is a canister of walnut oil, which doesn’t seem like it should be a bad thing to have – for starters, it would obviously make a nice salad dressing, which would come in handy if I ever got around to starting my diet. It wouldn’t be on a list of pantry items that make me scratch my head but for the fact that it is a very large canister of walnut oil.
A very large, unopened canister of walnut oil. I can only deduce that it was bought in error.
Still, walnut oil is lovely, and after running across several recipes on various food blogs for olive oil cakes, it occurred to me that perhaps I should use up some of the walnut oil in a similar way. A little bit of internet searching led me to the website of the oil’s maker, La Tourangelle, which included a recipe for Walnut Apple Cake.
The cake was easy enough to make, and when it came out of the oven, had a marvelous rustic look to it: bumpy and crusty, with some nice cracks and bits of apple poking their way through. When cut, the cake was decadently moist inside, and the crust had a wonderful chewy texture to it.
I was serving the cake to children, who turned their noses up at it, preferring instead the prettier, boxed supermarket cupcakes. The parents, though, all seemed to enjoy the Walnut Apple Cake, which was still warm from the oven when it was served.
A good cooling didn’t hurt it – it was even better the next day.
I don’t know about the day after that, since it didn’t last that long.
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup sugar
- ½ cup chopped walnuts
- 11/2 tsp vanilla extract
- ½ cup walnut oil
- 11/4 cup flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- ¼ tsp ground ginger
- Pinch salt
- 1 granny smith or tart apple
- Preheat oven at 350 degrees F. Butter and flour a 8" by 2" round cake pan.
- Peel, core and chop apple. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of the sugar over the apple pieces and toss together.
- Mix flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger and salt together and set aside. Whisk the eggs, vanilla, oil and remaining sugar until light. Gently mix in the dry ingredients just until barely combined (there should still be a few streaks of flour). Add the apples and walnuts and mix until just combined. Do not over mix.
- Pour the batter into the cake pan and bake for 45 to 50 minutes or until the middle of the cake springs back to a gentle poke
- Remove from the oven and turn out onto a wire rack to cool. While cake is still warm sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar.
This is my contribution to Weekend Cooking, hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Why not swing by and see what other simple pleasures await?
