Midwestern Luxury = Black Walnut Cake
A recipe for a rich but simple triple-walnut dessert
In the United States, people say, everything is over-the-top, from advertising to politics to portion sizes. That’s indisputably true of the American black walnut.
A cousin to the mild English walnut—what most people consider a standard walnut—the black walnut has a flavor that a panel of Cook’s Illustrated tasters described as “grassy,” “floral,” “bitter,” and possibly rancid. It’s intense. As the editors at Cook’s Illustrated concluded, it’s not for everyone.
Luxuries usually aren’t. That bold character, plus the time-consuming, finger-staining hulling-washing-curing-cracking-and-picking process1 that gets the precious nutmeats out of the half-rotten fruits that are probably still cluttering sidewalks and driveways near you, sets the black walnut apart as a rare and delicious treat. Strong flavors prompt strong feelings, and the umami-rich black walnut always connects me to the heartland woods in the fall, when the tree’s tropical-looking compound leaves turn a brilliant yellow, shivering against cool blue skies like confetti.
The black walnut is the foie gras of the Iowa woods, the wagyu of the Ohio leaf pile, the uni you can harvest by the bucket in your Missouri backyard, if you want to.
And whatever ideas you have about the Midwest, the black walnut probably predates them by millennia—reminding us that there’s always been so much more to the region than cornfields, casseroles, and cul-de-sacs.
Earlier this year, my fiancée, Liz, a food writer and Midwesterner contributor, made me a birthday cake with layers of black walnut flavor. She paired chopped walnuts with a Missouri-made roasted black walnut oil that’s unique and useful enough to justify an online order. (“You can swap the black walnut oil out for any neutral oil,” she says, “but know that the cake’s flavor will be much more subtle.”) She also added a shot of my homemade black walnut nocino, a dark, bracing liqueur made from unripe nuts, which works as a complex complement to the vanilla extract.
The cake was rich and wonderful, and the improvised recipe turned out to be a gift in itself. We’ve used it a few times this fall, to celebrate black walnut season, refining it as we go. Like many luxurious ingredients, black walnuts are best enjoyed simply, in a context that doesn’t distract from their flavor and texture. A fluffy yellow cake is an ideal vehicle for their truffle-like depth.
Liz Cook’s Black Walnut Cake
Serves 10-12
Prep time: 30 minutes
Cook time: 45 minutes, plus 1 hour of cooling
Total Time: 2 hours, 15 minutes
Black walnuts have inspired a comically diverse array of tasting notes. To me, they taste like bubblegum—a fruity, high-key aroma that cries out for temperance. For that reason, I eschew a rich buttercream for this cake in favor of a pillowy 7-minute frosting, which is mostly egg whites and sugar. However, this is a less stable frosting that should really be served right away. If you’d like to make this cake more than a few hours in advance, I recommend a traditional Swiss meringue buttercream instead.
Also, please use weight rather than volume measures. They’re more accurate and more likely to give you exactly the delicious black walnut cake we’ve been making.
Ingredients
3 eggs, at room temperature (150g)
1 cup + 2 tbsp. granulated sugar (250g)
4 tbsp. unsalted butter (60g), melted and allowed to cool slightly
½ cup Hammons Roasted Black Walnut Oil, or neutral cooking oil if necessary (100g)
1 cup buttermilk (227g)
2 tbsp. nocino (optional)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
¾ tsp. kosher salt
½ tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. baking powder
2 cups + 2 tbsp. all purpose flour (255g)
3 cups coarsely chopped black walnuts (460g), divided
1 recipe old-fashioned 7-minute frosting (see note)
Preparation
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Combine room temperature eggs and granulated sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer and whisk on medium-high until bubbly, about 1 minute.
Add butter, black walnut oil, buttermilk, vanilla, and nocino (if using) and whisk again just until combined, about 30 more seconds.
With the stand mixer running on low, add salt, baking soda, baking powder, and flour and whisk until no large clumps of flour remain. This should take no more than 30 seconds or so.
Remove bowl from mixer and stir in 1.5 cups chopped walnuts with a rubber spatula.
Pour into two greased, parchment-paper-lined 8-inch cake pans (if you have a kitchen scale, weigh the pans to ensure equal batter distribution). Bake for 30-35 minutes or until the center of the cakes are domed and spring back lightly when pressed. Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan for 15 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and let cool completely before frosting, allowing at least 1 hour. Frost and decorate with the remaining 1.5 cups walnuts, pressing them into the sides.
Under a cake dome, the cake will keep for 3 days at room temperature. Note, again, that the 7-minute frosting will degrade within a few hours.
Note: I strongly recommend lightly toasting the sugar for this frosting and amping up the salt to a full teaspoon. If you have nocino on hand, try adding that to the bowl along with the vanilla—I made mine with almost a full shot. It’s hard to overdo.
You don’t have to do all that! I still use my Grandpa’s Goody Getter every once in a while, but after years of working through my own buckets of black walnuts, I now lean on Stockton, Missouri’s Hammons Black Walnuts, the last large-scale black walnut processor in the world. (Tony Rehagen wrote about the company for Midwesterner in 2021.) Hammons sells walnuts online and through many Midwestern grocery chains, under their own brand and store brands. The last time Liz made this cake, I bought the nuts at Hy-Vee, and when I was living in Ohio, I could always find black walnuts at Kroger.