How I miss cherries and all those juicy berries, but all we have now are apples, pears and oranges. I have nothing against oranges but I hate peeling them. When I came across this recipe at Smitten Kitchen's a year ago, I was intrigued. It uses whole clementines - skins, pith, fruit and all. It was so fragrant, light, moist and zesty. Not at all bitter. The ground almonds gave it a really nice texture and wonderful flavour. I guess it's time to stock up on clementines!
Directions:
Ingredients: 1 9-inch cake
Adapted from Nigella Lawson's website
- 5 (about 370g) clementines
- 6 eggs
- 225g caster sugar
- 250g ground almonds
- 1 tsp baking powder
Directions:
- Put the clementines in a pot with cold water (enough to cover clementines), bring to the boil and cook for about 1 1/2 hrs or until soft.
- Drain and, when cool, cut each clementine in half and remove the pips.
- Dump the clementines - skins, pith, fruit and all - and give a quick blitz in a food processor.
- Preheat the oven to 190ºC.
- Butter and line a Springform tin.
- In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs by hand.
- Add the sugar, almonds and baking powder, mixing well, then finally adding the pulped oranges.
- Pour the cake mixture into the prepared tin.
- Bake for about 40 mins or until done (a skewer will come out clean). The cake started browning after 20 mins, so I covered with foil to prevent the top from burning. Nigella used an 8-inch cake tin and suggested baking for 1 hr.
Merry Xmas & Happy Holidays Everyone!!!
