Mandarin or Orange Flourless Cake

By XrayKim

I prefer mandarins. The fruit you use should be on the sweet side otherwise if could be bitter. I also find it gets bitter if I cook the mandarins one day and make the cake the next. Compensate with more sugar for sour fruit like lemons.

Ingredients

• 3-4 clementines (or other mandarins)
• 6 large eggs
• 1 1/4 cups white sugar
• 2 1/4 cups almond meal
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• I like to dust with powdered sugar.

Details

Servings 8
Adapted from nigella.com

Preparation

Step 1

Put the fruit in a pan with some cold water, bring to the boil and cook for 2 hours. Drain and, when cool, cut each mandarin in half and remove the pips. Dump the fruit - 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/375ºF. Butter and line a 21cm / 8 inch Springform tin.

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.

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.

I've also made this with an equal weight of oranges, and with lemons, in which case I increase the sugar to 250g / 2¼ cups and slightly anglicise it, too, by adding a glaze made of icing sugar mixed to a paste with lemon juice and a little water.

Additional information - for gluten free make sure that the baking powder is gluten free.

Instead of boiling the fruits, simply zap them in your microwave.(I have not tried this yet)