Walnut Dessert French Cake
Flourless Walnut Cake
This walnut dessert cake recipe is adapted from a French recipe called "Délice aux Noix," or Nut Delight. The original recipe was published in 1964 in the cookbook La Cuisine de France by Mapie. It is a simple flourless cake that I enjoy as a dessert. It has an interesting light texture, different from a typical flour cake.
Flourless Walnut Cake Recipe
This is a flourless recipe; it uses potato starch. Although potato starch is flavorless, it does allow other flavors to be effectively introduced into a recipe. This recipe's dominant flavor is Walnut, complemented by a subtle hint of vanilla. Vanilla enhances the cake's flavor, giving it appeal to a broader audience.
Ingredients for Walnut Dessert Cake
1 cup potato starch
1 cup finely chopped walnuts.
5 eggs (yolks and whites separated)
10 tbsp granulated sugar
¼ tsp cream of tartar
1 tbsp vanilla paste
½ tsp sea salt
3 tbsp confectioner sugar
3 tbsp unsalted butter
Instructions for Walnut Dessert Cake
This recipe requires a food processor to chop the walnuts finely and a stand mixer to cream the sugar and egg yolks and beat the egg whites stiffly.
Using a small food processor, finely chop enough walnuts to yield 1 cup, when lightly packed into a measuring cup.
Using room temperature eggs, separate the egg yolks and the egg whites.
Using a stand mixer, add the egg whites and cream of Tartar. Use the whip attachment and run the stand mixer low first, then medium-high. Beat the egg whites until stiff. This may take 4-6 minutes. Scoop the stiff, beaten egg whites out of the mixer and into a clean bowl, as you will need the mixer for additional steps.
Using a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, thoroughly cream the egg yolks, sugar, salt, and vanilla paste together at a low speed.
Slowly add the potato starch to the mixer on medium speed until combined.
Add the finely chopped walnuts with the stand mixer at medium speed until the creamed mixture and Walnuts are thoroughly combined.
Remove the stand mixer bowl and fold the egg whites into the cream mixture in the bowl. Be careful not to deflate the egg whites as you fold them in. You should end up with a uniform batter.
Butter a 9-inch non-stick cake pan using 3 tbsp of softened butter. Be sure to coat the bottom and cake pan walls thoroughly.
Add the batter to the cake pan and smooth the top with a rubber spatula until uniform.
Bake for 35 minutes in a preheated 350° F oven. The top should be a light brown uniform.
Let cool for at least 30 minutes; the cake should easily be removed from the pan when inverted.
Place the cake on your serving dish and sprinkle it with confectioners' sugar to finish.
Summary and Tips for Making Walnut Dessert Cakes
Do not make a substitute for potato starch; other starch types do not yield the same results. Do not substitute potato flour for potato starch; they are different.
Before stiffening the egg whites, ensure that your stand mixer bowl and whip attachment are clean and free of oil and soap residue. Using the cream of Tartar stabilizes the egg whites.
Freeze the walnuts, then grind them in a small food processor. Grinding the nuts frozen will help prevent them from turning into butter, keeping them more like a fine-grain texture.
To finish, use a small strainer to sprinkle the confectioner's sugar evenly over the cake.
A characteristic of a potato starch cake is that it shrinks back from the cake pan walls, this allows the cake to easily be removed from the pan when it cools.
For another flourless recipe cake recipe see our Torta Barozzi Chocolate Cake.
