German Walnut Cake

May 13, 2020

A few years ago I had the pleasure of travelling to Berlin to visit my paternal grandmother’s relatives in Germany for the first time. I stayed with my great aunt Jutta, a warm-hearted and generous woman with a deep love of food. The most striking feature of Jutta’s lot was an immense walnut tree with boughs that spanned the width of the yard. The tree had grown to be an important part of the home’s ecosystem, dominating a space where three generations of family met regularly to dine and celebrate. The tree’s arching branches delivered welcome shade in the Berlin summer; they also hung heavy with walnuts. I fondly remember a cloth sack containing the previous year’s harvest that hung on the porch alongside a well-used nutcracker — an open invitation to pair freshly cracked walnuts with a crisp glass of Riesling, some herb-rolled cheese, and good conversation.

Walnuts were anything but a luxury for Jutta’s family: with some patience and a bit of elbow-grease, these nuts were simply a delicious fat and protein-laden part of their day to day life, a gift from their yard. For me, as someone who grew up in Quebec, walnuts have always been something of a mysterious delicacy. Expensive enough to be uncommon in our household and delicious enough to be captivating. Walnuts were associated with celebration, be it in the form of nuts cracked at Christmas or more commonly in the spiraling layers of my family’s favorite cake. These nuts are the prime ingredient in the recipe which I have shared.

I always marvelled as a child to think that back in Germany, where my Oma was from, these nuts grew on trees. The traditional German recipe transcribed below has travelled overseas with our family, squeezed between the weathered cover of an old German cookbook, one of the few possessions that my grandmother carried with her when she left Germany shortly after the close of the Second World War. The ravages of the war and xenophobia in postwar Germany spurred my grandmother and her Croatian husband to leave Berlin and to settle eventually as refugees in the small village of Isle-Maligne, Lac Saint-Jean. Six hours North of Montreal’s German community and two and a half hours North of Quebec City, life in Isle-Maligne was lonely for my unilingual grandmother. This loneliness must have been immense, something which I have dwelled on a fair bit during this last month of self-isolation. German-speakers were few and far between, and the prejudices and wounds left by the war remained fresh in the small community for years after the conflict. The old cookbook that Oma carried with her, printed in thick gothic type, was an important link to her home country, carrying traditions, nostalgia, comfort and a taste of home.

Decades have passed since my grandparents arrived in Canada, and my Oma passed away when I was still small. Yet, this recipe remains as a warm memory of her. This cake which has been the centerpiece of so many family celebrations, big and small, has now been made by my non-German mother for decades. Mom is an excellent baker and a loving mother, a person who is glad to keep my father and his sisters as well as her sons well provisioned with treats from a childhood which she does not share. Under my mother’s care, this recipe has been preserved and passed down to my brothers and I, migrating around the province as we set our own roots down.

The recipe itself remains typical of a simple country cake as would be found in much of Germany and Eastern Europe. The dough from which the cake is made is yeast-leavened, which means that to some it may seem more akin to bread than cake. It makes light use of richer ingredients such as butter, sugar and eggs, ingredients which were costly when the cookbook was printed. The filling points to the abundant production of German walnut trees, just like the one in Jutta’s yard, yet the adaptability of the recipe means that you have many options for potential substitutions if walnuts are not handy: hazelnuts, almonds, pistachios or poppyseeds would work as ideal substitutes if you have them, although I would avoid grinding the poppyseeds. In a pinch, sunflower or pumpkin seeds might also do the trick. Similarly, jam or a cinnamon sugar mix with butter as one might put in a cinnamon roll would also work. When I made the cake most recently, I was out of yeast and so the version you see pictured was actually leavened with sourdough. If using yeast expect a slightly fluffier result and feel free to add more sugar to the filling if you have a sweet tooth.

And so, amid this international health crisis you may be feeling stressed and concerned, isolated and worried. But I hope at least that this recipe brings you a taste of our family’s comforts, and lets your mind travel off… maybe even to a peaceful, shady Berlin yard, under the boughs of a walnut tree.

Cake Dough:
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp. yeast
1/4 tsp. sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp. vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour

Nut Mixture:
1 1/2 cups walnuts, crushed.
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter
1/8 cup milk.

1) Scald the milk in a saucepan. Remove from heat and add the butter and 1/4 cup of sugar, let cool to room temperature.

2) Mix 1/4 cup warm water with the 1/4 tsp. sugar. Dissolve the yeast in this mixture. Let rise until doubled in size.

3) In a large bowl combine the yeast with the milk mixture and add the egg and vanilla. Mix well.

4) Slowly add the flour, and knead until the surface of the dough is glossy. Let rise until doubled in size.

5) While dough is rising make the filling: melt butter and sugar in a small pot on medium heat, add crushed walnuts and milk, stir a few minutes until thickened.

6) Punch dough down and roll out to 1/4 in. thickness. Spread with nut mixture leaving edges bare, roll as you would a cinnamon roll.

7) Place roll in a well-greased and floured bundt cake pan. If you do not have a bundt cake pan, shape dough into a round and place on a greased cookie sheet to bake freeform.

8) Leave dough to proof for 45minutes-1hour, preheating oven during the last 30 minutes.

9) Bake cake for 30-40 minutes at 350º until golden brown.

10) Let cool for a few hours minimum, best eaten when fully cooled.

Nick Tosaj is a food historian who is currently completing his PhD in History at the University of Toronto. He teaches history at John Abbott College, you can find him on Instagram @nick_tosaj