Orange Almond Cake

Herr Moutarde rarely makes baking requests, but recently, he asked if I could make him this almond cake. The recipe is from Jane Lawson’s Cocina Nueva, The New Spanish Kitchen, which darling H gave me as a birthday present a couple of years back.

I still haven’t cooked my way through the entire book yet, but this cake is really yummy. When I first got the book I would make it quite regularly, but haven’t done so in a while….

The cake is deliciously moist, sweet with the orange permeating through. In the book, it also gives the recipe for a citrus ice cream to serve, which looks great in the photo, but I’ve never bothered to make lol.

Butter mixture

The butter (yes, I used Real Butter), was beaten with the orange and lemon zest with quite a lot of icing sugar and touch of vanilla. Using icing sugar made this step soo much quicker than with normal sugar!

Adding egg yolks

Finely ground almonds

I toasted the almonds lightly and finely ground them. I’ve recently gotten a new food processor so any reason to use it is fine by me! These almonds were added to the butter mixture along with a touch of milk.

Egg whites at firm peak

I really appreciate all recipes which manage to incorporate the egg yolks AND whites:) There’s no waste and I don’t have to think about what I’m going to do with the unused part lol.

Combining egg whites with almond mixture

After everything was combined, I put the mixture into a rectangular cake tin and baked it in the oven for about an hour.

This cake can be served warm – which I love, and I recommend serving it in smallish portions as it’s quite dense lol.

Dusted with more of that icing sugar!

Like I said, I haven’t managed to get through most of the recipes in this book, but if this anything to go by – I’m definitely looking forward to it!