Middle Eastern Orange Cake - recipe

I had a friend coming for lunch who was gluten intolerant. After a previous disastrous lunch where I tried to make gluten free bread, I decided to take a different approach today.

Today's lunch was a rotisserie chicken (not based in soy sauce because even that has gluten in it!), salads and a baked layered potato dish (I used sliced fennel in the layers which was nice but not a strong flavour). 

We tried something new with the chicken and soaked it in brine (salty water), lemon on herbs for a day, then dried it out in the fridge overnight. I then just based with olive oil and garlic salt when it was cooking. It turned out beautifully. It looks burned in the picture but it was more smokey charred. It's a really good and easy way to cook it.

This was followed by a Middle Eastern Orange cake that was made using ground almond meal rather than flour. The really interesting part of the cake was that the recipe starts with 2 whole oranges simmered for 2 hours in water. This is not something I had come across before. They came out really soft, but not mushy...almost like cutting through butter.

The cake gets added to the 'make again' list. It was a cross between a cake and a pudding and despite having almond meal instead of flour, still had a reasonably light consistency. It looked quite dry before I cut into it but was wonderfully moist.

I served it with greek yoghurt made in the yoghurt maker and peeled orange segments.

Middle Eastern Orange Cake

Ingredients

Serves: 10

• 5 large oranges
• 6 eggs, beaten
• 2¼ cups ground almonds
• 1¼ cups caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 cup plain low-fat yoghurt

Preparation method

Prep: 30 minutes | Cook: 3 hours

1.

Wash 2 of the oranges and place in a saucepan with water to cover. Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for 2 hours. Allow the oranges to cool, then cut open, remove the pips and roughly chop the flesh.

2.

Preheat the oven to 190°C. Grease and flour a 22-cm springform tin. Process the cooked oranges, eggs, ground almonds, sugar and baking powder in a food processor.

3.

Pour the batter into the prepared tin. Bake for 1 hour or until the centre is firm (note that this is a very moist cake). Cool in the tin before gently turning out.

4.

Peel the remaining oranges with a small paring knife. Separate the orange segments from the membranes. Serve the cake with the fresh orange segments and some yoghurt on the side.