Greek Walnut Cake with Creme Anglaise

Most of this recipes I have made a few weeks ago but never had a chance to post them quick enough on my blog as I have had some issues to deal with. This is another recipe from My Kitchen Rules 2014 series which was made by the greek twins that received very good comments and high scores from Pete Evans and Manu Fidel. If it is good enough for their taste bud then it's worth me trying the recipe out.

Ingredients

Cake:

Melted butter, to grease
60g (½ cup) crushed walnuts, toasted
Icing sugar, to serveCake
140g (2 cups) fresh breadcrumbs
150g (1 cup) plain flour
300g (2½ cups) finely chopped walnuts, toasted
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp ground cloves
6 eggs, separated
250g unsalted butter, at room temperature
220g (1 cup) caster sugar
1 orange, zested, juiced
2 tbs brandy

Crème Anglaise
400ml milk
200ml pouring cream
1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped
4 egg yolks
110g (½ cup) caster sugar

Sugar syrup
220g (1 cup) caster sugar
2 cinnamon quills
1 lemon, zested, juiced

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Grease a 20cm x 30cm cake pan with melted butter and line with baking paper, extending over longer side by 5cm.
2. To make cake, combine breadcrumbs, flour, walnuts, baking powder and spices in a large bowl. Set aside. Place egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat (on medium speed) for 2 minutes to soft peaks. Set aside.
3. Using an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar (on medium speed) until pale and fluffy. Beat in egg yolks, orange zest and juice, and brandy. Stir in breadcrumb mixture, then fold in egg whites. Spoon mixture into prepared pan and bake for 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.
4. To make crème anglaise, place milk, cream and vanilla seeds in a medium heavy-based saucepan over medium heat and cook, without boiling, until hot.
5. Whisk egg yolks and sugar in a medium bowl until combined, then whisking continuously, gradually add hot milk mixture to egg yolk mixture until combined. Return mixture to same pan over medium-low heat. Using a wooden spoon, stir for 7 minutes or until mixture is thick enough to coat the back of the spoon. 
6. Strain mixture through a fine sieve into a bowl.
7. To make sugar syrup, place all ingredients and 500ml (2 cups) water in a medium saucepan over low heat and stir for 3 minutes or until sugar dissolves. Simmer for 10 minutes or until reduced by half. Pour hot syrup over hot cake in pan, then set aside to allow cake to absorb syrup.
8. Slice cake and place on serving plates. Dust with sifted icing sugar, then pour over a little crème anglaise. Serve with remaining crème anglaise to the side.

Unfortunately this time I was so excited to get into the baking of this cake that I negelcted to take pictures of the steps I took but if I do ever make this again I'll be sure to take pictures and upload it here and update the blog.