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CLEMENTINE CAKE

This is incredibly easy to make; even if you're stressed out, it won't topple you over into nervous collapse. It's such an accommodating kind of cake: it keeps well, indeed it gets better after a few days, and it is perfect either as a pudding, with some creme fraiche, or as cake.

It is a wonderfully damp, dense and aromatic flourless cake: it tastes like one of those sponges you drench, while cooling, with syrup, only you don't have to. This is the easiest cake I know.

Recipe posted by Nigella

Ingredients

  • Gluten Free
  • Nigella Recipe
  • Vegetarian
  • 4-5 clementines (about 375g total weight)
  • 6 eggs
  • 225g sugar
  • 250g ground almonds
  • 1 heaped teaspoon baking powder

Method

Serves: 8-10
  1. Put the clementines in a pan with some cold water, bring to the boil and cook for 2 hours. Drain and, when cool, cut each clementine in half and remove the pips. Dump the clementines - skins, pith, fruit and all - and give a quick blitz in a food processor (or by hand, of course). Preheat the oven to gas mark 5/190ºC. Butter and line a 21cm Springform tin.
  2. You can then add all the other ingredients to the food processor and mix. Or, you can beat the eggs by hand adding the sugar, almonds and baking powder, mixing well, then finally adding the pulped oranges.
  3. Pour the cake mixture into the prepared tin and bake for an hour, when a skewer will come out clean; you'll probably have to cover with foil or greaseproof after about 40 minutes to stop the top burning. Remove from the oven and leave to cool, on a rack, but in the tin. When the cake's cold, you can take it out of the tin. I think this is better a day after it's made, but I don't complain about eating it at any time.
  4. I've also made this with an equal weight of oranges, and with lemons, in which case I increase the sugar to 250g and slightly anglicise it, too, by adding a glaze made of icing sugar mixed to a paste with lemon juice and a little water.
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Comments

  • Wondering about the almonds, do they need to be blanched or can the skins be left on? Also raw or roasted?

    Posted by anker50 on 28th Apr 2011 at 15.28

  • I made this cake using oranges, it was amazingly moist and the texture was to die for but all I could taste was the bitter pith of the oranges. Clementines aren't readily available in NZ, what is the best thing to substitute them with? I used Navel oranges, or is there something else I can do to override this taste?

    Posted by cparlane on 6th Jun 2011 at 7.33

  • This cake is totally AMAZING! What a totally wonderful way to use up my oranges. Thanks Nigella

    Posted by Noisy on 3rd Aug 2011 at 10.57

  • I just wanted to say thank you for a fabulous recipe! I baked a version of this delightfully pudding-ish-cake, substituting in blood oranges (and some extra sugar to make up for the relative tartness) for a recent work function, it was well loved by my two gluten-intolerant colleagues and everybody else as well.

    Posted by tuckettk on 16th Aug 2011 at 9.45

  • You know what? Yesterday I made this cake replacing the clementines with 5 limes. I used 250 grams of demerara sugar instead of 225 grams of caster sugar and the outcome was..... delicious! Just a hint of bitterness, lovely. Lovely!

    Posted by Rodrigo-Andrés on 7th Oct 2011 at 10.03

  • Wonderfully moist delicous cake, lightly whipped cream and you have a lovely desert

    Posted by Wenswam on 12th Oct 2011 at 0.09

  • I add ginger, powdered cloves, ground black pepper, nutmeg and cinnamon. Then just a twist of salt to bring the flavour forward. Turns this superb recipe into a spicy gluten free Christmas cake.

    Posted by audiojumble on 22nd Oct 2011 at 14.29

  • I made coffee, orange liqueur for Christmas last year and used the oranges (that had been marinating in vodka for 44 days) in place of the clementines (I didn't boil them first); absolutely fabulous - needless to say I'm making it again this year!

    Posted by sandraltsmith on 13th Dec 2011 at 20.50

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