Walnut Torte

Yesterday I got around to trying "the" walnut torte in my new kitchen. Amazingly simple ingredients - walnuts, eggs, sugar, lemon rind, that's it - for amazing results.

However, I no longer have half the kitchen conveniences that I used to use to make it. The food processor and the stand mixer sadly are no longer in my possession, but the cake turned out perfectly fine without them. It took a bit longer to process the walnuts through a rotary nut grinder, and they were a bit coarser than I was used to from the food processor, but they served the function well. It had been a nice convenience to have the stand mixer and a hand mixer, since you have to be sure the beaters are clean in order to beat the egg whites to a stiff peak, but it was fine to use the hand mixer's whip for the whites, then the standard beaters for everything else. So - I think I'm coming around to the view that you don't need to stock your kitchen with a bunch of gadgets, especially if it's a small kitchen. Someday I'll have counter space...