These last three weeks I have been on diet, no wheat, rye, oat, nor rice, potatoes or corn. It went quite well, it's easier in summertime I reckon, because all the delicious sallads you can eat. The hardest was -and still is- not to be able to eat a good sandwich or an afternoon cake and tea. I'm an inveterate tea drinker and I'm sure that a tea-and-cake addiction is comparable with coffee-and-cigarettes :) So yes, I miss my cake.
This sunday we had our neighbours visiting and it was a good reason to bake a cake. I made a redcurrant cake (yummy, I'll post the recipe soon) for them and Nigellas flourless chocolate orange cake from Feast for myself. (Careful, I can hear what you're thinking :D "A whole cake for one person?" Phleeeeeze, I'm on diet because of my health, not because I'm lacking appetite!)
My friends at Nigella.com and later on Vi's Pantry have been raving about this cake, I don't know why on earth I've never tried it.
Chocolate Orange Almond Cake
Ingredients
2 small thin-skinned oranges
6 eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
200 g ground almonds 250 g caster sugar
1 dl cocoa
orange peel, for decoration
Directions
*Put the whole orange or oranges in a pan with some cold water, bring to the boil and cook for 2 hours or until soft.
*Drain, and when cool, cut the oranges in half and remove any big pips.
*Then pulp everything - pith, peel and all - in a food processor.
*Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180°C, butter and line a 20cm springform tin.
*Add the eggs, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, almonds, sugar and cocoa to the orange in the food processor. Run the motor until you have a cohesive cake mixture, but slightly knobbly with the flecks of puréed orange.
*Pour and scrape into the cake tin and bake for an hour, by which time a cake tester should come out pretty well clean. Check after 45 minutes because you may have to cover with foil to prevent the cake burning before it is cooked through, or indeed it may need a little less than an hour; it all depends on your oven.
*Leave the cake to get cool in the tin, on a cooling rack. When the cake is cold you can take it out of the tin. Decorate with strips of orange peel or coarsely grated zest if you so wish, but it is darkly beautiful in its plain, unadorned state.
Enjoy!
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| the almost-black beauty |
It turned out to be a cake that was delicious, moist, morish, that could be eaten without any remorse. I used Green & Black's Organic Cocoa Powder, the taste was great but it wasn't a black beauty as Nigellas. It was just a tiny bit too orangy, next time I might not use all the orange peel, perhaps one and a half. This is definitely a cake I'll make again and again, no matter diet or not.
Oh, one more thing. A book recommendation: Diane Setterfields The Thirteenth Tale. I bought it a couple of years ago but somehow didn't read it before now. It is written in best classic storytelling tradition and goes perfectly well with the almond cake and a cup of spicy tea with almond milk.
