Australian-Moroccan Orange Cake (Made in Valencia)

Oranges and Clementinas are my favorite fruits, they remind me of when I was a child, pinching them from the trees on the way home from school. There is a wonderful cake that we make in Australia (it may originally be Moroccan), which combines two beautiful and readily available Spanish ingredients. Oranges and ground almonds. You will be surprised at the difficulty and expense you will encounter in other countries, trying to obtain ground almonds. Here, in Spain, they’re readily available, so take advantage of it (it even makes a luxurious face scrub when mixed with water, and won’t contain any other unnecessary chemicals). This cake is absolutely delicious and doesn’t contain any wheat flour or gluten, for those with allergies.

Australian-Moroccan Orange Cake

1. Simmer 2 whole oranges in water for approximately 2 hours. Drain and remove.

2. Preheat the oven to 190 C (or 150 C for convection ovens), grease a 20cm shallow cake pan with butter and line the base with parchment or baking paper. Grease this too.

3. In a food processor, or blender, pulse the whole oranges until you have a smooth, even consistency.

4. Beat 6 eggs with 250gms of caster (granulated) sugar until light and creamy.

5. Fold 250gms of ground almonds into the sugar and egg mixture.

6. Carefully fold the oranges into this mixture and pour the batter into the prepared pan.

7. Bake cake for 50 mins – 1 hr at 190 C and 35-40 mins at 150 C in a convection oven.

Be careful to turn the cake during cooking if you notice it browning on one side more than the other.

Remove cake from oven when a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean, let stand on wire rack for 5 mins then carefully invert onto wire rack and allow to cool.

I like to ice this cake with pure dark chocolate (melted on a double boiler with a small amount of butter), and serve with raspberry coulís and crème fraiche. A friend of mine dissolves sugar with equal amounts of Clementina juice, making a syrup to spread over the top. We have also tried it with both the chocolate and the syrup, which is even better!

This is a wonderful cake, satisfying both the chocoholic in most people after dinner, and providing others with an exotic orange marmalade flavor to cleanse the pallet. Either way, the texture the ground almonds lends it is one to be savoured… I bet you can’t have only the one slice!

I hope everyone has had enough to eat and is enjoying the World Cup!

Erica Choate