I’ve been on a cooking kick. I’ve digitized most of my recipes, except for some that are in actual recipe books that I own. I found walnuts at Costco. And I was reminded of one of the first cakes that made me interested in baking: the Hungarian Jancsi cake.

It’s a cake with only 5 ingredients: chocolate, eggs, sugar, walnuts, and cream of tartar. (I don’t even consider cream of tartar a real ingredient. It’s just there to help make the meringue more better.) But of course, the fewer the ingredients, the more complicated the process. For this cake, I had to use the blender, the food processor, and the stand mixer–and even both of the stand mixer bowls.

Was it delicious? Absolutely!

It’s not the most attractive cake, but it’s moist, chocolatey and nutty. I brought it to a (small) potluck and got very favorable comments. (Or they were just being polite.)

As a bonus, it’s fairly easy to make it gluten-free and dairy-free. The only gluten was from greasing and flouring the pan, but you can use almond flour as well for that. To make it dairy-free, use a non-dairy grease for the pan and use a dairy-free chocolate. I used to use a lot of Theo’s chocolate for my dairy free baking.

Unfortunately, this recipe is not available online. It was why I bought the book Rose’s Heavenly Cakes, and it was absolutely worth it.

However, I also remembered why I stopped making it: It’s such an involved process! It took me about an hour of prep time, and then it had to be baked. So if you know a place that sells it, it’s totally worth it to just buy a slice to try it.