Grandma's Walnut Cake Bars

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. 

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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.

German Crescent Cookies

I discovered these wonderful cookies when a friend baked me a batch a few years ago after my daughter was born, and I've been hooked ever since. They're tender, flakey and nutty but not overly sweet, the perfect snacking treat around the holidays, and frankly any time of the year. Excellent companions to hot tea or coffee as well, and incredibly easy to make. 

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The dough starts out almost like a pie crust, except it involves equal parts butter and cream cheese - the cream cheese makes the dough more tender and gives it a lovely tart and creamy note. It comes together in no time and all and you can use a food processor to make this part of the process even quicker. Chilling it after mixing is important, to give the flour a chance to properly hydrate and the fat to solidify so it maintains its structure through rolling and baking.

   

After the dough is chilled for 2 hours or overnight, cut it in quarters and shape it into discs. Ideally, you'd rolls this out into an even circle, but honestly perfection is not needed here, the cutting and rolling process is quite forgiving and the cookies will look wonderful even if they're not perfectly even in size. 

Here's where the magic comes in though - the dough doesn't get rolled out on a floured surface like any old cookie, but rather on a mix of nuts and sugar (cinnamon and lemon zest optional). This gets embedded into one side of the dough as it rolls out and coats it in flavor and texture. Don't worry too much if the mixture ends up on the top as well as you move the dough around and the rolling pin picks up some of the sugar-nut mix, but keep it on the same side as you roll it all the way out to a ~10" circle. The dough will be quite thin, but keep it as even in thickness as you can.

Cut the circle of dough into 16 triangles, like you'd cut a pizza (in half, then quarters etc to ensure roughly even slices) - you can see in the picture above an example. Then, take each triangle and roll it from the short edge towards the opposite tip as you would a regular crescent roll, with the nut encrusted side on the outside and the (nearly) plain side on the inside. Repeat with the remaining 3 discs, you should end up with 64 little cookies ready to bake.

Place these close together in a pan, I like to use parchment or a silicone mat to ensure easy cleanup. They don't grow a lot in the oven, so in a standard cookie sheet pan I usually fit 32 of them, two rounds in the oven total. 

Bake in preheated 350F oven for 12-14 minutes until baked through and slightly golden on the bottom. They won't take on a lot of color when baking, so keep that in mind as you judge when they're done. Enjoy warm or cooled.

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German Crescent Cookies

Ingredients

• 300g flour
• 200g butter
• 200g cream cheese
• 60g sugar
• 60g brown sugar
• 60g ground hazelnuts
• 1 tsp cinnamon (optional)
• lemon zest (to taste, optional)

Method

1. Knead a smooth dough from the flour, butter and cream cheese. 
2. Wrap in cling film and put in the refrigerator for at least two hours or better overnight.
3. Mix both sugars, ground hazelnuts, cinnamon and lemon zest in a bowl.
4. Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare two cookie sheets with either parchment paper or silicone mats.
5. Take the dough out of the refrigerator, quarter it and shape it into balls.
6. Sprinkle a little hazelnut-sugar mixture on your work surface and start rolling out one of the dough portions on top. Move around as needed to ensure it doesn't stick/the coating is everywhere under your dough. Keep rolling into an even thickness until you get a 10" disc.
7. Cut into 16 parts (like a pizza) and roll up into crescents.
8. Place on a baking sheet and bake in the preheated oven for 12-14 minutes.

Notes

• I often skip the cinnamon and lemon zest, especially when I want the flavor of the nuts to really shine through. You can also use other spices and adapt the recipe to your taste.
• You can use any nut flour/ground nuts you prefer. Almonds and pecans work really well.
• The recipe is easy to scale up and down as needed, just make sure the amount of dough you roll out into a 10" disc is roughly the same as the original recipe.
• These cookies freeze really well, and they keep in a covered container at room temperature for several days.

Jaffa Cake Roll

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Chocolate and orange have long been one of my favorite combinations. So are raspberry and (dark) chocolate and more recently passion fruit and ruby chocolate, but I digress. Naturally, I was drawn to the Pim's cookies during my study abroad time in France and I loved the Jaffa cakes during my visit to Dublin a while back. There's even a debate on which one is best, but I'll stay out of that one. :)

Inspired by this combination, I started playing around with ideas on how to bring it together in a home made dessert. I made some muffin sized sponge cakelets topped with orange jelly and chocolate, but though they were tasty the ratios were off and the sponge texture wasn't quite what I envisioned.

Later on, I decided to steer away from the individual dessert format and into something that could work well as a centerpiece dessert, where I could focus on the flavor and texture components without the tedious piecewise assembly. Thus, I settled on the swiss roll. 

I made a pretty simple angel food cake style sponge, which is light, moist and flexible so it holds up to rolling and works as a great flavor canvas. For the rendition pictured here, I actually gave the whole thing a fall flavor twist, I'll include the variation details in the recipe notes - the sponge got a good dose of pumpkin spice mix to set the tone.

While the sponge cooled, I worked on the next essential layer - the orange jelly. For jelly made from scratch, the ratio I used is 1 tsp of gelatin powder to 1 cup of liquid - in this case, orange juice, orange zest and rooibos tea combined for the base, in which I dissolved bloomed and melted gelatin powder. For my fall inspired version, I used a pumpkin spice rooibos packet. I lined a pan the same size as the sponge with plastic wrap and poured the jelly mix inside, then set in the fridge to set. 

Finally, it was time for the chocolate - I of course planned to melt and temper some chocolate for the signature shell on top, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to include it inside the roll as well, after all what's a swiss roll without a creamy filling? I made a simple chocolate mousse using chocolate and cream - melted the chocolate using part of the cream (I also melted a bit of gelatin to help stabilize the mousse), then let it cool to almost room temperature. Then, I whipped the remaining heavy cream and folded the ganache gently and gradually. I let it chill in the fridge before spreading it on the sponge and jelly for final assembly.

Last but not least, a Jaffa cake is not complete with the snap of a layer of chocolate - I tempered some dark chocolate and drizzled it over the roll to create a hay effect for the fall theme. you could also just pour a thin layer all over for a shell on top. This is a pretty well explained step by step to temper chocolate, I'm still working to hone my own skills so I claim no expertise in this area.

I wish I had more progress shots to illustrate these steps, but I was a bit too eager to get to the decorating part for the fall inspired jaffa roll so I put it together quickly while running ideas through my head of how I would decorate it. I made a batch of these fantastic pumpkin spiced marshmallows, which I topped with orange and white sprinkles and cut in the shape of pumpkins and leaves.

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Jaffa Cake Roll

Sponge Ingredients

• 2 eggs, separated
• 30g sugar
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• 35g milk
• 23g oil
• 7g cornstarch
• 30g flour

Method

1. Preheat oven to 325F, line a quarter sheet pan with parchment.
2. Separate eggs into two medium bowls, set whites aside for the moment.
3. Whisk oil and milk into egg yolks until smooth.
4. Sift flour and cornstarch into yolk mixture, whisk until well combined.
5. With clean whisk or hand mixer attachments, whisk egg whites until foamy.
6. Gradually add sugar while continuing to whisk, until soft peaks are achieved.
7. Add lemon juice and keep whisking to stiff peaks.
8. Fold egg whites into egg yolk mixture in 2-3 additions, careful not to deflate the whites too much.
9. Spread batter evenly in prepared pan and bake 25-30 minutes until set and lightly golden.
10. Transfer sponge to a cooling rack with the parchment lining and lay another sheet of parchment on top to prevent drying out. Let cool completely.

Jelly Ingredients

• 1 cup orange juice
• 2 tbsp orange zest
• 2 tbsp honey
• 1/2 cup water (or an herbal tea, if you's like some floral notes)
• 1 tbsp powdered gelatin

Method

1. Mix gelatin and water/tea in a small bowl and let sit for the gelatin to bloom.
2. Gently warm up to melt gelatin - this can be done in the microwave in short 20s intervals or over a bowl of hot water.
3. Pour melted gelatin in a medium bowl along with all the remaining ingredients (orange juice, zest, honey).
4. Line a pan the same size as the sponge (quarter sheet pan for this recipe) with plastic wrap and pour enough of the jelly mixture to achieve 1/4" thick layer. Let this chill in the fridge until set.
5. When ready, use plastic sheet to transfer jelly to the top of the sponge layer.

Chocolate Mousse

I used this recipe, except I mixed in darker chocolate with the semisweet for more depth of flavor.

Assembly

- lay out cooled sponge on work surface on a piece of parchment

- place jelly sheet on top, leaving 1/2" from one short edge and trimming the other end to make it just a bit smaller than the surface of the sponge

- spread chilled mousse on top with an offset spatula to a uniform thickness of about 3/4"

- using the parchment, roll the sponge tightly starting with the edge where the jelly left 1/2" space, careful not to let the jelly slip out as you do this

- twist the ends of the parchment sheet to secure the roll seam side down, and place in the fridge to set

- before serving, drizzle or spread tempered chocolate on top and decorate as desired

- slice with a clean knife to serve (dipping in warm water and wiping off with a kitchen towel before cutting ensures a clean line)

Notes

- for a fall themed variation, I made the following changes to the recipe: added 2 tsp of pumpkin spice seasoning to the sponge  at the same time as the dry ingredients; I used pumpkin spiced rooibos tea instead of water in the jelly mix; I added a pinch of nutmeg to the chocolate mousse

- I like desserts that are more subtly sweet, so I didn't add a lot of sweetness to the orange jelly. Consider including up to 1/4cup of sugar to the jelly to taste if you prefer.

Grandma's Apple Pie

 Sometimes nostalgia strikes - it's fun to be transported back to the time and land of my childhood through food. Based on a recipe for Hungarian apple pie and adding a bit of my own spin on it, I tried to recreate the apple pie bar my grandma would make in Romania. 

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Hosting guests was always a big event at my grandma's house, she would always go all out to impress - from a generous array of appetizers, soup, hearty main course and sides, and home made dessert, as well as ensuring appropriate drink pairings. Did you know the best way to start a meal in Romania is with smoked pork belly, red onion and a shot of plum brandy (palinca)? Now you do :)

Her desserts weren't particularly elaborate, but they had that homey goodness of a tried and true treat, passed down from one home cook to another. The additional perk of that is that the ingredient list is usually very accessible, mostly with everyday items that I can have on hand at any time at home. This apple pie is one of those recipes. This is not your classic American pie, not even close. It's somewhere between an apple bar and breakfast pastry, with a flaky yeast leavened dough (though I've heard of it made with baking soda as well) and a pre-cooked apple filling thickened with semolina, a staple in Romanian cooking. 

The dough starts similarly to classic short crust of American pies - cut fat into flour, add flavor and wet ingredients, knead briefly. I used cream cheese for half the fat component for a creamier, more tender crumb, but also added lemon zest for flavor and the wet ingredients include egg and a mix of yeast, warm milk and sugar. The egg adds richness, and the yeast provides the signature fluffiness of this pie bar. Mix the egg and yeast into the flour mix first with a spatula/fork to incorporate without fully melting the butter, then knead briefly to bring together without overworking it. Bring into a rough ball, cover and rest at room temperature for 30-45 minutes to get the yeast a chance to work its magic. 

While the dough rests, it's time to work on the filling. My grandma used to grate her apples, and recipes I've found recommended slicing them, I split the difference and cubed mine, I love the uniformity of a smaller cut in any apple bake I make. I also included a pear because I love the flavor and texture, and cut it the same size as the apples. Sautee the apples (and optional pear, or just use another apple) with sweetener of choice and flavorings until softened and the juices start to thicken, around 5-10 minutes on medium-low heat. I used maple syrup for that cozy fall vibe, and added vanilla paste, cinnamon and nutmeg. I don't think I ever encountered maple syrup before moving to the US, so my grandma definitely just used regular sugar, but I couldn't resist the toasty caramel flavor to pair up with the warm spices. Remove from heat, stir in semolina to thicken the filling and set aside to cool.

Roll out half the dough to the shape of your pan in a thin, uniform sheet - you're aiming for something large enough to cover the bottom of the pan and go up the sides about an inch, just like any other pie. Spread filling in to reach every corner of the pan and press gently to fill in all the gaps. Since this is a closed top crust pie, things won't move around and shouldn't sink as you cook, so what you arrange now is what you'll get when it's done. This is the step where you can also add marzipan if using, or you can choose to sprinkle some chopped lightly toasted nuts - almonds or pecans would work great. Roll out the remaining dough to the size of the pan, then pinch the edges to seal. 

For color and shine but also flavor, finish the crust with an egg wash - a whole egg or just a yolk works great. A tip I found is to brush the egg wash, let it sit for 5-10 min to slightly dry, then brush on an additional layer of egg wash - it will be smooth and uniform but richer than just one pass. Lightly poke the crust in a few places for steam to escape. I also make squiggly lines with the back of the fork across the crust for a fun design effect. Certainly not necessary but fun nonetheless.

Bake in a preheated 325F oven for 35-40 minutes, until gloden brown on top and baked through. For best structure/clean cuts, cool completely before serving. However, this is so good still warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, so pick your favorite option and dig in!

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Grandma's Apple Pie

Makes a 10"x10" pie

Ingredients

• 250g flour
• 4 tbsp butter, chilled
• 4 tbsp cream cheese
• 65g powdered sugar, divided
• zest of one lemon, divided
• 1.5 tbsp warm milk
• 3.5g instant yeast (half a packet or 1 tsp)
• 1 egg
• 3 medium apples
• 1 medium pear
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 30g maple syrup
• vanilla extract
• 2 tbsp semolina
• 1 egg/yolk for brushing on top
• 2-3 tbsp marzipan (optional)

Method

1. Preheat oven at 325F.
2. In a small bowl, mix 5g powdered sugar, the warmed milk and the yeast and set aside for 5-10 min to activate.
3. Cube butter and cream cheese and add into flour. Cut them in using a pastry cutter or butter knife until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs.
4. Mix in 60g of powdered sugar, half the lemon zest and a pinch of salt, combine lightly.
5. Add yeast mixture and one egg, then knead lightly until it comes together.
6. Cover bowl and let this rest for 30 minutes.
7. Chop up apples and pear in small cubes, then mix in medium pot with the maple syrup, remaining lemon zest and a splash of vanilla extract.
8. Bring apple mixture to a simmer over medium heat, then cook a few minutes until the fruit is softened and the liquid thickened.
9. Remove from heat, add semolina and set aside to cool.
10. Roll out half the dough in a thin sheet, then lay in the greased pan to cover the bottom and 1" up the sides.
11. Gently press in cooled filling, and top within thin slices of the marzipan, if using.
12. Roll out the second half of the dough and lay on top of the filling, press together around the edges to seal.
13. Brush on top with egg or just egg yolk, then create a pattern on top using a fork.
14. Bake for 35-40 minutes until the bar is cooked through and the top is golden brown.
15. Let it cool for a bit before cutting in squares to server.

Notes:

• I added cream cheese in the crust for a lighter, most tender crumb. however, if you prefer a more crisp crust you can use all butter.
• If you don't have/want the pear, you can always just use 4 apples. Play around with the varietals to get some variety of texture. I used two Gala and one Granny Smith. 
• I couldn't resist and added some nutmeg to the fruit as well. Any combination of warm spices you enjoy would work well.
• I used an adjustable square form with parchment to get the 10"x10" size, but this would turn out quite well in a 9"x9". A rectangular 9"x13" would be ok too but the dough may be so thin that it wouldn't hold up.