A Big Little Recipe has the smallest-possible ingredient list and big everything else: flavor, creativity, wow factor. Psst—we don't count water, salt, black pepper, and certain fats (specifically, 1/2 cup or less of olive oil, vegetable oil, and butter), since we're guessing you have those covered. Today, we’re making a cake that’s totally nuts. No, seriously.
If I say flourless cake, you probably think of something rich and dense and chocolatey. This is no surprise, since without starchy, gluten-y wheat flour, a chocolate cake turns out moister and fudgier and better.
This flourless cake is just as repeat-worthy, though there’s not a speck of chocolate involved. Instead, there are pecans. Lots and lots of pecans.
I had never thought to make another type of flourless cake until a few months ago: It was late morning at the Food52 office. I was hungry. There was a lonely cake in the team kitchen, left over from a photoshoot. It smiled at me. I smiled back. Two slices later and I was smitten. It was the nuttiest cake I had ever tried (or the cakiest nut?) and I couldn’t get enough.
Lucky for me, the recipe was already on our site, and had been for years. It was the Calabrian Walnut Cake, and our contributor Emiko Davies described it as such:
As walnut cakes go, this must be the simplest and most essential of them all. The cake itself is made of just three ingredients—walnuts, eggs, and sugar. A little lemon zest adds a delicate, fresh aroma and powdered sugar makes it pretty. It's a traditional cake from Calabria in southern Italy, the sort of cake that nonna would make.
Emiko got the recipe from a 1960 edition of Italian Regional Cooking by Ada Boni. In the book, Boni recommends horizontally halving the cake into two layers and frosting it with lemon buttercream. But, to me, it was perfect plain.
And it got me thinking, if ground walnuts can create something this wonderful, what other nuts are waiting to be cake-ified? My mind quickly went to pecans. And as soon as I thought of pecans, I thought of brown sugar. And as soon as I thought of brown sugar, I thought of salt. Because if sugar is one of the main components in any recipe, there needs to be some balance.
Of course, this means I changed all but one ingredient (eggs) in the original Calabrian recipe. But the ratios are the same. And the result is just as love-at-first-bite—dense, toasty, fudgy, and extremely nutty—like a pecan sandy shape-shifted into something flour-free, special enough for a holiday, and habit-forming enough for late-morning snacks all year round.
| Butter, for greasing the pan | |
| 4 | large eggs, at room temperature, separated |
| 1 | cup (213 grams) light brown sugar |
| 1 | teaspoon kosher salt |
| 3/4 | pound (340 grams) raw pecan halves or pieces |
| Butter, for greasing the pan | |
| 4 | large eggs, at room temperature, separated |
| 1 | cup (213 grams) light brown sugar |
| 1 | teaspoon kosher salt |
| 3/4 | pound (340 grams) raw pecan halves or pieces |
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Written by: Emma Laperruque
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29 Comments
2cans chic peas,4eggs,1 1/2 c semi sweet choc chips,1/2 tsp BP,3/4 c sugar.whir drained beans in food processor,melt choc, add with vanilla& bp,sugar.blend till smooth. Pour into greased 9” pan(I coat “flour”w cocoa sometimes)350’ 40 minutes (or till tooth pick tests done) yum
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