A very useful cake for entertaining Coeliac friends though you do need to check your ingredients state they are gluten-free. This is both richly chocolatey and light as air, plus really easy to make. Serve alongside a coffee, or with cream or vanilla ice-cream. It’s a good idea to boil the orange the day before.
Chocolate Orange Cake – serves 8
- 2 small or 1 large thin-skinned orange, about 375g total weight
- 6 eggs
- 1 heaped tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 200g ground almonds
- 250g caster sugar
- 50g cocoa
Put the oranges into a pan with cold water, bring to the boil and cook for 2 hours until soft. Drain and leave to cool, then cut in half and remove the pips. Pulp the oranges in a food processor (with skin and all).
Preheat the oven to 180C.
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. Whizz until the mixture comes together but still a bit rough with some flecks of puréed orange.
Scrape the mixture into the prepeared tin and bake for an hour, a skewer inserted into the middle should come out fairly clean. Check after 45 minutes and cover if needed, you can also check it for doneness at this point.
Leave the cake to cool in the tin, on a rack. When cold remove from the tin and serve with cream.
(Original recipe from Feast by Nigella Lawson, Chatto & Windus, 2004.)
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