Caramel Walnut Loaf Cake

Recipe:

Ingredient Notes:

• Butter. Use butter with a fat content of 72% or higher. I don’t recommend using vegetable shortening – it adds a subtle chemical flavor that ruins everything. The butter in this recipe is soft – room temperature. But not melted!
• Sugar. For both the batter and the caramel filling, it’s better to use regular white sugar with small crystals that dissolve better and faster.
• Flour. All-purpose flour with a protein content of about 10% works well. Strong bread flour is not suitable for this recipe.
• Eggs. For this recipe, use medium size eggs at room temperature. One egg weighs about 50-55 g. If you don’t have enough time for the eggs to warm up on the counter, place them in a bowl of hot tap water for 15 minutes.
• Cream. This recipe requires heavy cream with a fat content of 30% or more. A cream with less fat is not suitable.
• Nuts. The best texture for this muffin is walnuts, pecans, or cashews. Hazelnuts and almonds are best left for other recipes – they are too hard for this one.

Let’s start cooking.

Make the caramel filling. Place the sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. Remove the saucepan from the heat, pour in the preheated heavy cream, return to the heat and stir until smooth.

Transfer to a bowl and let cool.

To make the caramelized nuts, pour the sugar into a saucepan and melt. Add the nuts, broken into medium pieces, and stir. Add the butter, stir again and remove from heat.

Transfer to a sheet of parchment paper or silicone mat and let cool.

For the batter, beat the butter with the sugar until creamy.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition. Add flour sifted with baking powder and mix.

Fill the batter into a pastry bag. Place the layers in the loaf pan: batter, caramel, nuts, batter, caramel, nuts, batter (I baked in two small pans, but this amount of ingredients fits well in a standard 30*11 cm loaf pan).

Place the pan in a preheated oven at 180°C (355°F) and bake for about 40 minutes.

Remove the cake from the pan and let it cool completely.

Enjoy!