Recipes

Orange Cake Recipe

February 2, 2016

Orange Cake Recipe

I buy a box of clementines every year right before Christmas. The first few are gobbled up immediately, but then I get busy and am too occupied sampling all my Christmas baking to eat anything as healthy as fruit. By the end of January, there are sure to be some hard and dried-up looking clementines in the fruit bowl. This year, instead of throwing out the sad remaining clementines, I Googled “clementine recipes” and found dozens of variations on this orange cake recipe. Boiling the clementines whole is pure evil genius; I only used half a dozen or so of the shrivelly clementines for the cake, but I boiled up the rest and used the pulp for smoothies. I followed the recipe to the letter, but I think it could be improved with a generous pinch of cardamom or a drizzle of chocolate. Next time, I’ll try a variation with lemon. I’m also thinking lime and coconut would be yummy.

Orange Cake Recipe

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Ingredients

6 clementines (or 1 pound)
6 large eggs
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups almond flour or very finely ground blanched almonds
2 teaspoons baking powder

Instructions

Put whole, unpeeled clementines in a large pot of cold water and bring to a boil over high heat. (photo 1)
Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer gently for 2 hours, adding more water as needed.
Remove clementines with a slotted spoon and, when cool enough to handle, cut in half and remove any seeds or other hard bits. (photo 2 and 3)
Purée clementines in a food processor. (photo 4)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Spray a 9-inch springform pan with cooking oil, line the bottom with parchment paper and spray the paper with oil.
In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, sugar, salt and clementine purée.
Add the almond flour and the baking powder and stir until just combined. (photo 5)
Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake until the edges of the cake are golden brown and starting to pull away from sides of pan, about 1 hour.
Transfer the pan to a wire rack for ten minutes, then run a knife around edge of pan to loosen the cake, and remove cake from pan.
Peel off parchment paper and return cake to wire rack to cool completely. (photo 6)
Sift powdered sugar over the top of the cooled cake or drizzle with chocolate glaze. (photo 7 and 8)