Soups & Starters
Puddings & Desserts
Orange and almond cakes
Perfect as a dessert, or for afternoon tea
I came up with this recipe after seeing a loaf cake recipe in a slow cooker cookbook - I liked the idea of the orange and almond flavour combo but didn’t have the patience to cook it for hours, so I adapted it (well, changed it quite a lot in fact!) so that it could be cooked in a conventional oven
Ingredients
Makes Four individual cakes
- 2 tbsp soft dark brown sugar
- 2 tbsp runny honey
- 1 orange
- 125g butter (at room temperature)
- 170g golden caster sugar
- 2 eggs
- 125 self-raising flour
- 50g ground almonds
Method
First, grease four individual cake tins (see Tip below). Then, using a very sharp knife, cut four thin slices from half the orange. Lay each slice flat on a chopping board and use the tip of the sharp knife to take off the peel and pith in one clean ring. Lay one peel-free orange slice in the base of each tin. Then zest the remaining half of the orange, squeeze the juice and set both aside.
Melt the dark brown sugar and honey in a small pan and pour into the base of each tin to almost cover the orange slices.
Cream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs, then stir in the zest and the flour and almonds, followed by the orange juice. Divide the mixture between the tins and bake at 160C (fan oven) for 25 to 30 mins, until risen, golden brown and firm to the touch.
Run a knife round the tins to loosen the cakes then turn out onto plates. Serve with cream, ice cream or custard - or just as they are!
A Cook's Plot Tip
Make this in individual cake tins if you have some that are big enough to take a whole orange slice in the base, otherwise use a deep 8in cake tin.