Tangential question: what’s the Armenian name for “Armenian nutmeg cake”? It’s an odd recipe, you put half the dry ingredients in the pan, then make a batter with the rest and pour it on top.
I wonder if in the original it might have been mahleb rather than nutmeg.
Im not much of a baker so I might be missing something, but why would you do it that way? Is it to avoid overmixing the batter?
The bottom is a sort of crust.
Got me racing around google trying to figure this out and failing. I don’t even remember a strong nutmeg flavor in anything growing up so maybe they use a little. Do you have a pic of what you’re talking about? I wonder and hope it’s one I love called karakum (sp?)
We have a couple half dry cakes including the famous khata/gata . Miss it when gran used to make those
looks beautiful… let me hit up some aunties 
so since my aunties don’t know i’m going to just guess this is some lebanese or persian armenian thing or something because they’d know if it was armenian armenian.
Maybe Persian.
I cannot find any traditional recipe or history on the Armenian Nutmeg Cake.
You can imagine my surprise when I excitedly told my neighbor that I was making an Armenian Nutmeg Cake and she responded with, “I don’t think there is such a cake.” My neighbor who is an Armenian cook par excellence checked all of her cookbooks for me…there was no mention of a Nutmeg Cake. I researched Armenian cooking to see which spices were most often used when preparing sweet dishes…cinnamon was the winner. My neighbor talked to her mom and her sisters…they had never heard of it.
Solved. It’s the Armenian version of carrot cake. Phew
Jazarov tort or torte
There’s no carrot in it. Flour, sugar, butter, egg, milk, nutmeg, salt, and baking powder, with walnuts on top.
i saw the carrot in the recipe you linked but sounds like that person was just riffing .
I only linked to that because it was just a good picture. This is typical of the recipe that’s most common in the Internet echo chamber and is the earliest I can find:
http://esurientes.blogspot.com/2005/08/armenian-nutmeg-walnut-cake_25.html
She says “a friend gave me some photocopied sheets from a recipe book from her old school.” The odd 110-gram measurements make me pretty sure that the original recipe called for 1/2 cup of butter.
This early, relatively authoritative post by a New Zealand cookbook author expresses doubt that it’s Armenian:
http://www.ladiesaplate.co.nz/recipes/larger-cakes/armenian-nutmeg-cake.html
I’ve ordered a 1973 cookbook that’s the earliest recipe I could find using Google Books.
Nice. .yea they’re just doing the baking. You’re customizing by yourself at the table you’re taking the baked goods to. So i’ve never had that filled maneishe either
My Persian crew doesn’t know it either. Awesome puzzle
It’s suspect. That recipe has 3 things that don’t exist in Armenia. Maybe the baker is adapting though.
Here’s a recipe that blames the Syrians and says it’s from the 1971 Elmira College Cookbook.
There’s a sidechain of echoes spawned by a relatively recent cookbook that blames the Balinese.
hilarious… yea honestly i dont remember ever having anything with nutmeg growing up.
Here’s a 2001 blog post that calls it “Laurie Colwin’s Spice Cake.”
This is going to be your cake. It’s easy. You can do it. And it will be your specialty. You don’t have to tell anyone where you got the recipe. You can say it is an old family recipe if you want. And I won’t ever publish it.
