The peasant version of the classic urban walnut cake, with a little of a personal touch!
ingredients for 10 generous servings (cost about 8€ with organic ingredients)
for the cake
- 200 g ground walnuts
- 160 g superfine sugar
- 6 eggs, separated yolks from whites
- 200 g semolina flour
- 12 g baking powder
- 5 g ground cinnamon
- 1 g ground cloves
- 0,5 g freshly grated nutmeg
- 1 g salt
- zest from 2 oranges
- 0.5 g nutmeg
for the syrup
- 500 ml water
- 50 ml brandy or orange liqueur (Grand Marnier or Cointreau)
- 275 g sugar
- peels from 2 oranges
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 2 cloves
for the ganache topping
- 120 g bitter chocolate (70% fat)
- 120 ml full fat milk
- 25 g walnuts coarsely chopped
- stripes from candied orange peels
After the Athenian walnut pie (Athinaiki karidopita), we present you its rural version. The melachrini, which in Greek means brunette.
This version, is more like a sponge cake, since it is mostly based on eggs, having no, or little butter. I guess that the melachrini version was preferred in the villages, since most of the families, had their own hens, so they must have always had an abundance of eggs to use.
The ratio of the ingredients, was based on a formula developed, probably, for memorization purposes, that is 1 cup of each ingredient for every egg included. The result would be, in fact a cholesterol bomb, so I preferred to adjust the ratios to a more “healthy” version.
I also chose to cover it in the end with a rich layer of chocolate ganache, to make it even more “brunette”.
So, first of all, we prepare the syrup, by placing all the ingredients in a saucepan (except for the alcohol), bringing to a gentle boil and letting boil for about 3 minutes. The, we remove from the heat, we add the alcohol we are using, we we cover with a lid and we let it with the aromatics inside to infuse and cool. If we want to make the alcohol to evaporate, keeping just the flavor and aromas (for kids, or intolerants) we add it from the beginning with the rest of the syrup ingredients. Or we might, as well, substitute it with equal ratio of orange juice.
In a bowl we sieve the semolina flour with the baking powder, ground spices and salt. We add the ground walnuts, we mix well and we set aside.
We beat the yolks with 2/3 of the sugar with a hand mixer for about 10 minutes or until the mixture turns white, becomes creamy and triplicates its volume.
We also beat the egg whites with a pinch of cream of tartar and the rest of the sugar into a stiff meringue.
We add half of the mixture with the dry ingredients and half of the meringue into the yolks – sugar mixture and and we gently fold them with a spatula. We also add the orange zest. We repeat with the rest of the ingredients.
We transfer the batter into a well buttered, lined and floured 24 cm (20 cm if I make half portion) round cake tin and we bake in a preheated oven at 160 o for about 35-40 minutes.
As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, we drizzle it slowly with the cold syrup – one ladle at a time – and we let it soak well, until it completely cools.
When the cake has cooled, we heat the milk and we pour it over the chocolate, already cut into small pieces. We let the chocolate steep in the milk and then we mix them thoroughly with a spatula, until we end up with a smooth and glossy ganache.
We cover the cake with the ganache and we garnish with thinly sliced candied orange peels and coarsely chopped walnuts.
