Walnut Butter Cake

When I was young, my mom used to order really nice walnut cakes from a home baker.  The cake was very moist and fluffy. My mom will help her colleagues order and orders were always large. The auntie will spend hours the day before baking. The funny thing is my mom never met the auntie before, only my dad has seen her before, as he is the one who goes to collect the cakes. I can't remember when, but eventually the auntie stopped taking orders, but will still give us walnut cakes every CNY... but we didn't have walnut cakes as often. That eventually stopped too. The ones from Bengawan Solo were too oily, and couldn't match up. My parents tried to get the nearby bakery to bake walnut cake but somehow, it just doesn't seem to be the same... probably cos they have to sell cheap (or else no one will buy) and compromised on quality. And that is why I have always wanted to bake a walnut cake when I first started baking. I went through a few websites and finally settled on two... tried to combine the two and also add what I knew about the famous Mrs Ng's butter cake.

Recipe adapted from My Baking Cottage and Guai Shu Shu.

8-inch pan

Ingredients
250g Butter
140g caster sugar
4 eggs, separated
200g plain flour
4g baking powder
30g chocolate chips
150g walnuts, toasted and finely chopped
80g milk

Instructions

1. Prepare and line a 8-inch square pan.
2. Lightly toast in an oven for about 5 minutes. Use Turbo Chopper and chop finely (with some bigger pieces is ok).
3. Sift flour and baking powder. Set aside.
4. In a large mixing bowl, cream slightly softened butter with half of the sugar (70g) using an electric beater until light and fluffy.
5. Add egg yolks, one by one and cream and cream till well mixed.
6. Put in half the flour and mix on low speed until incorporated. Add in milk in 2 additions and mix until well incorporated. Mix in balance flour.
7. In another mixing bowl, beat egg whites using an electric beater until soft peaks. Add the other half of the sugar (70g) slowly and continue beating until the egg white reaches stiff peaks (when you lift the beater, the tip droop slightly, and beaten egg whites becomes stiff and shiny).
8. Add toasted nuts and chocolate chips into the cake batter.
9. Fold in beaten egg whites into the cake batter, in two to three additons, until egg whites is well-incorporated into the batter.
10. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake in preheated oven at 160C for about 50 minutes.

Note:

• I had wanted to get a 7-inch pan, but wasn't able to buy one. The 8-inch pan yields quite a short cake, but it was still ok for me. The first time I baked this, I used a 9-inch pan and it was OMG short!
• I tried out chopping 150g walnut into quarters - too big. Then I tried having half finely chopped and half quartered - still too rough. Finally I tried 150g finely chopped - perfect! My mom and hb doesn't like walnuts that are too big and totally loved the finely chopped version. My MIL on the other hand, prefer having the bigger walnuts. I personally liked the finely chopped version... so bite but not too much.
• Some found the cake a bit sweet, but it is because of the chocolate chip... so no real control on that. Not a choice to leave the chocolate chip out, as it tastes good in the cake.

I baked this for Mothers' Day today - well received by the adults and kids. :)