Flourless Orange and Almond cake

As a farewell present from Oxfam, my very thoughtful co-workers bought me a cake decorating book and some more Le Creuset ramekins. I thought for my final day at work I should make one of the cakes out of the book, however didn't quite have the time to decorate them when I was finally done for the night. The book (Planet Cake) has a few basic cake recipes at the start of the book, and this one has already been made 3 times (in one week) so I'm thinking thats worth blogging about!

The recipe makes a monster-sized batch of cupcakes or two round cakes, so I've halved it the last two times i've made it. The only time consuming part is preparing the oranges, however it can be a very useful hour to do other things too.

Start off with 2 to 3 oranges and clean their skin well. Put them in a large saucepan with enough water to cover them. Put a small plate on top of the oranges to keep them submerged in the water (otherwise they float) and bring the water to the boil. Reduce the heat and let the oranges simmer for an hour. After this time, they should be quite soft to touch but shouldn't have broken the skin. Drain the water and let them rest until they are cool enough to handle. Cut each orange into quarters, remove the pips, then puree in a blender or food processor.

Meanwhile, beat 8 eggs (yep, EIGHT) with 420g of sugar and 1 teaspoon of baking powder. Beat for about 5 minutes until the mixture is quite pale and very fluffy. Slowly beat in 420g of almond meal and then 420g of the orange puree. The mixture is supposed to be quite runny as it is a very moist cake, however it still needs to resemble cake mixture, so add more almond meal if you need.

Pour into the tin and bake in 180 degree over (350F) for 1 hour 30 minutes until golden brown and a skewer poked into the centre comes out clean. If you are doing cupcakes, they need approximately 20 minutes, but this varies on the size of the cupcakes, and of course of the oven. Cool completely in the tin.
I have enjoyed this cake two different ways now, the first was to ice them with a slighty orangey frosting, and the second was served warm with a dusting of icing sugar and a dollop of cream. Both delicious and both worth trying! One other thing I tried was to substitute some honey instead of the huge amount of sugar required! It tasted great but required a little longer to cook as it was obviously more runny. Delish though!

These were the iced ones I took to work...

And this is the one Kara and I destroyed the other night (perhaps also with a teeny tiny icecream too!!)