That was a busy afternoon, with normal after school snack, home work and other activities of the young one at home. When there was news of sudden guests, I started thinking of quick and easy sweets to serve them. With just a couple of hours in hand and a desire to serve something good, if not exotic, I started surfing my brain for quick goodies. I opened the fridge to find a box full of walnuts and decided to bake a walnut cake. What started as a quick bake, turned out to be a perfect cake with additional chocolate ganache and walnut topping too.  As always, the cake is 100% whole wheat with olive oil and no butter. To reduce more, I mixed the whole batter in a blender, without any stress on hands.

Quick recipe for the quick cake…..

  
Whole Wheat Walnut Cake with Walnut Coated Chocolate Ganache

  
Ingredients

• whole wheat flour – 2 cups
• sugar – 1 1/2 cups
• olive oil – 1 cup
• eggs – 3 no.s
• baking powder – 1/2 tsp
• baking soda – 1/2 tsp
• milk – 1 cup
• vanilla essence – 1 tsp
• walnuts (finely chopped) – 1 cup

Method of Preparation

1. In a blender, beat 3 eggs – white and yolks combined
2. Add sugar, olive oil and blend. You would arrive at a mayonnaise consistency
3. Add 1 cup whole wheat flour and beat well in the blender
4. Add baking powder and the rest 1 cup flour and blend well. Now, the mixture would be quite thick
5. Boil milk in a pan and pour into a bowl with baking soda. The soda added milk would bubble-up into a frothy fluid
6. Pour this frothy milk into the mixer jar and blend till well incorporated
7. If one feels the mixture is still thick, add little water to make the batter a bit thinner
8. At this point, preheat oven at 180 deg. C.
9. While oven is getting heated up, transfer the batter into a wide jar and fold in the finely chopped walnuts
10. Pour into greased tin. I used small loaf tins to bake tea cakes. One can bake a whole round or rectangular cake as preferred
11. Bake the batter for 25-30 minutes or till a tooth pick comes out clean.

Chocolate Ganache with walnut topping

• 70% dark chocolate – 150 gms
• full cream – 150 gms
• hersheys unsweetened cocoa powder – 2 tbsp
• walnuts – 1 1/2 cups – little more or less – very finely chopped

1. For the ganache, keep a double boiler on stove and place any good quality dark chocolate, preferably 70% cocoa. I prefer 70% here as there is no extra sugar needed and it is not too bitter.
2. 70%-80% also gives me the freedom to use unsweetened cocoa powder to make it more chocolatty and slightly bitter as per my taste buds. 90% is truly bitter and adding sugar solidifies it more and that ends up in more cream for the texture of ganache.
3. So go in for your own favorite good quality dark chocolate and combine with unsweetened cocoa powder and cream, and make your own very bitter/moderately bitter/less bitter ganache as preferred.
4. Once the chocolate starts to melt, add cream and cocoa powder and stir well till it becomes thick enough to spread with ease. We don’t need pourable consistency here nor a thicker version to apply over the cake.
5. Spread the ganache on the cake with ease and sprinkle the very finely chopped walnuts on top.
6. Keep in freezer for 10 minutes to set.
7. Cut and serve.
8. The cake is equally good without the ganache too.