Walnut Blitz Torte -- A Layer for Everyone the Kitchen Still Holds

The kitchen is teaching me, again, what it taught me when Paul died: cook anyway. Eat anyway. Continue anyway. The kitchen is patient. The kitchen does not care that I am tired. The kitchen does not care that I am sad. The kitchen says: turn the stove on. Heat the oil. Chop the onion. Begin. The kitchen has always been the wisest member of this household. The new Sven (Sven the Second) is six months old now. He chewed through my favorite shoe. He jumped on the kitchen counter. He is the worst-behaved dog Duluth has ever produced. I love him completely. He has the energy of a small storm. He is the right thing for the kitchen right now. The first Sven was a steady ocean. This Sven is a storm. Both are necessary in their seasons. Sophie called. Her voice was thick. She said she was sorry about Mamma. She said she had been trying to type a text for an hour and could not. She called instead. We did not say much. We did not need to. Sophie has been to enough funerals at this point to know that the calls after are not for words but for the audible presence of a person on the other end of the line. The presence is the love. The presence is the bridge. I cooked Apple pie this week. Honeycrisps from the orchard, peeled, sliced, sugared, cinnamon-and-nutmegged, heaped in a butter-and-lard crust, lid on top, slits cut for steam. Forty-five minutes at 425, then twenty more at 375. Served warm with sharp cheddar (the correct way). The Damiano Center on Thursday: wild rice soup, fifty gallons. Gerald helped me ladle. He told me about a regular who got into a sober house this week — a man named Curtis, who has been coming for soup for eight years and who has been sober for forty-three days now. The soup did not get him sober. The soup was there when he was hungry. The soup is the door, again. The door is the chance. I read one of Paul's books in the evening. The Edmund Fitzgerald chapter. I have read it forty times now. The fortieth time is no less affecting than the first. The transmission still gives me a chill: "We are holding our own." Captain McSorley's last known words. The chapter ends with the wreck on the bottom of Lake Superior, and the men still inside, and the lake refusing to give up its dead. Paul read this chapter to me in 1989, on a winter evening, in the living room. I did not know then that he was reading me his own future. It is enough. Paul is not here. Mamma is not here. Pappa is not here. Erik is not here. They are all here in the kitchen, in the smell, in the taste, in the wooden spoon and the bread pans and the marble slab. The dead are not where the body went. The dead are in the kitchen. I have been thinking about the kitchen as a kind of slow-moving river. The river has carried things for a hundred and fifty years now — Mormor's recipes from Uppsala, brought across the Atlantic in steerage in the 1880s; Mamma's adaptations of those recipes for the cold of Minnesota; my own modifications, picked up over fifty years; the small experiments my granddaughters bring home from cooking shows they watch on phones. The river keeps moving. I am one bend in it. There will be others. It is enough.

The apple pie was for the week itself — for the raw middle of it, for the smell that needed to fill the house. But when Sophie called again on Sunday and I found myself wanting to bake something that took longer, something that required attention in layers, something with a little ceremony to it, I turned to the walnut blitz torte. It is a recipe that asks you to stay present: the meringue, the cake beneath it, the cream and walnuts assembled at the end. Paul would have eaten two slices without apology. Mamma would have said it was too rich and then eaten a third. That is reason enough.

Walnut Blitz Torte

Prep Time: 30 min | Cook Time: 30 min | Total Time: 1 hr | Servings: 10

Ingredients

• Cake layers:
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 4 egg yolks
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 5 tablespoons whole milk
• Meringue topping:
• 4 egg whites, at room temperature
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup chopped walnuts, divided
• Filling:
• 1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream
• 2 tablespoons powdered sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

1. Prepare the oven and pans. Preheat oven to 325°F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round cake pans. Line bottoms with parchment paper.
2. Make the cake batter. Beat butter and 1/2 cup sugar together until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add egg yolks one at a time, beating well after each. Stir in vanilla. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture alternately with the milk, beginning and ending with flour. Divide batter evenly between the two prepared pans and spread to the edges — the layers will be thin.
3. Make the meringue. In a clean bowl, beat egg whites on medium speed until soft peaks form. Gradually add 1 cup sugar, beating on high until stiff, glossy peaks form. Beat in vanilla. Gently fold in 1/2 cup of the walnuts.
4. Top and bake. Spread meringue evenly over the batter in each pan. Sprinkle remaining 1/2 cup walnuts over the tops. Bake for 28–32 minutes, until meringue is set and lightly golden. Cool in pans on wire racks for 10 minutes, then carefully turn out. Cool completely meringue-side up.
5. Make the whipped cream filling. Beat heavy cream, powdered sugar, and vanilla together until firm peaks form. Refrigerate until ready to assemble.
6. Assemble the torte. Place one cake layer meringue-side down on a serving plate. Spread whipped cream generously over the top. Set the second layer meringue-side up on top. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before slicing.
7. Serve. Slice carefully with a sharp serrated knife. Best served the day it is assembled, though leftovers keep, covered, in the refrigerator for one day.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 430 | Protein: 6g | Fat: 27g | Carbs: 44g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 130mg