Walnut cake. Steve's birthday was earlier this week, but we're celebrating it today because its when we could all get together. Laurie is the usual cake maker, and so she asked what kind of cake he'd like. She said something like, "rich heavy cakes aren't really your thing." Steve replied, "A rich heavy cake would be fine." I had the idea to make a dessert from Madeline's, a very good restaurant in Ithaca, called a Viennese Walnut Cake. So, I went looking for recipes.

Walnut cakes are not the easiest thing to find. The Joy of Cooking has a French-style walnut cake with ground walnuts, but not the kind with big pieces of walnut barely held together with cake batter. I found a recipe from the Silver Palate cookbook for apple walnut cake, which I modified and made all walnut. We also cooked it in a Bundt pan, so the cheesecake filling is out, too. But it sure looks good.

Oh, and while we were cooking Bill Clinton called again, along with Mario Cuomo. Wesley Clark called yesterday. Yes, we know Election Day is Tuesday.