If I was describing the texture of a good cake I’d expect to describe it as one of either “light and fluffy” or “moist and dense”. Never did I imagine there could be such a sweet, delicious cake that is simultaneously light, moist AND dense. Does that make sense? Probably not – you’ll just have to make this cake to experience the phenomena for yourself!
Gazing into a cake cabinet one Sunday afternoon at Oliver and Co at South Brisbane I spied a cake flavour that intrigued me. It was called Middle Eastern orange cake. Weeks later I stumbled across Claudia Roden’s recipe for Middle Eastern Orange cake just in time for I ate Brisbane’s featured flavour. I really enjoyed making this cake!
This was so elegant in its simplicity with just four main ingredients. I loved watching the oranges bob around in the boiling water and enjoyed the sensation of halving them – it literally felt like a hot knife through butter!
And the taste oh the sweet, light, moist, dense taste! You’ll just have to make it to experience that for yourself! This is the perfect afternoon tea cake.
Ingredients
- 2 large oranges, washed
- 6 eggs
- 250g ground almonds
- 250g sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
Recipe
- Boil oranges in a little water in a covered saucepan for 2 hours. I used enough water to just about cover the oranges
- Allow oranges to cool then cut them in half and scoop out the flesh. Chop the flesh roughly
- Preheat the oven to 190oC and prepare a springform tin (either butter and flour the tin or line with baking paper which I opted for)
- Blend oranges and remaining ingredients in a food processor. For this step I used a Tupperware Quick Chef to finely chop the oranges and then used my KitchenAid to mix the ingredients thoroughly instead of using a food processor
- Pour batter into prepared tin and bake for 1 hour. If the cake is still wet, cook for a little longer
- Allow to cool in tin before gently turning out
We love this cake (…my partner is gluten-free…) and usually add a chocolate ganache with some orange oil or essence. Stephanie Alexander attributes her version to Claudia Roden. BTW, almond meal is much cheaper than at supermarkets if you buy from places like QFFS (…$20/kg as opposed to $5-$6/200gr.!)
you dont happen to know what the history of this cake is do you?
Catherine I was JUST about to make this cake, i was so excited, i’d already boiled the oranges for 2 hours, then looked at the almonds in my cupboard – completely INFESTED with grain moths. GRRRRR! So I’m going to use the orange flesh for a kinda-sorta crepe suzette.
x s