At grandma's house, every special occasion, every out-of-town guest visit, was marked by her pulling out her hand grinder the night before, grinding walnuts and making her delicious cake bars.
With only a few ingredients, every flavor is allowed to shine and it's such a delight you can never just have one bite. I am grateful I got this recipe passed on by my grandma a few years ago and I started making it around the holidays every year. It ages well too, so if you don't finish it all in the first day like I usually do, as it dries it becomes a wonderful accompaniment to coffee or hot tea.
The list of ingredients really is very simple - eggs, butter, sugar flour and nuts, with vanilla and chocolate flavors lovely bonus light touches on top. It also scales up and down pretty easily, so feel free to make it a bit thinner (in my mis-en-place above I made a 3/4 recipe in the same pan for a thinner bar, for example) or in a smaller/larger pan.
The first, and really important step is to ensure all ingredients are at room temperature before beginning. The sugar and butter need to whip together until light and fluffy and that's really not possible without a very creamy butter to start. Next go in the nuts and flour - I usually cheat and use nut flours (see notes), but for a bit more texture go ahead and grind up your own. As you can see above, at this step your mixture will be quite thick, but here come the egg whites to the rescue! Whip the whites just until you get stiff peaks. A touch of cream of tartar helps the whites along, but you want to make sure you don't go too far and let them break up or they'll deflate as you incorporate them into the batter.
Start with one third (I call this the sacrificial fraction), and mix thoroughly to help lighten up the buttery nutty base. Then add the remaining thirds one at a time, folding gently but only just until incorporated to get a thick but creamy and fluffy batter. Spread this evenly in a pan prepared with lightly oiled parchment paper (or butter+flour coated) and bake halfway in a preheated oven. You're looking for the cake to be just set but still have a shine in the middle (undercooked) at this stage.
While the cake is doing its first stage of baking, prepare the delicious topping that really sets these bars apart - whip the egg yolks with sugar until very pale and light. They should triple in volume and fall in soft ribbons from the beaters when lifted from the bowl. My easy cleanup secret here is that I just reuse the beaters from the whites as trace amounts of white won't compromise the yolks (unlike whites, which will not whip if there is any yolk in them, beware!). My grandma used to flavor these with a Romanian kitchen staple - vanilla sugar. I don't find this in stores in the US very often, so I just use a dash of vanilla extract or the seeds from half of a vanilla pod if I'm feeling fancy.
Hot tip: Don't throw away the vanilla pod left over after you scrape out the seeds! You can put it in a mason jar with granulated sugar and shake it now and then, and voila! You have vanilla sugar in your pantry which you can use in this recipe next time or in any other baking application to add a touch of vanilla flavor.
Carefully pull out the partially baked cake from the oven and pour the fluffy yolks over the top, making sure to spread them edge to edge. Return to the oven until set and barely starting to change color to a golden brown.
Finally, the signature look of this cake comes from the way my grandma always decorated it - grated chocolate over the top as soon as it comes out of the oven. The warm cake melts the chocolate flecks beautifully so they adhere to the cake and meld with the rich yolk topping. Let this cool completely (if you can resist it for that long), then cut in small bite sized shapes and serve. I try to only remove as many pieces as I want to serve at one time so the rest stay moist and fresh, but a batch of this goes pretty quickly at our house :)
Enjoy with hot coffee, herbal tea or just on its own.
