Whole orange cake

This cake came about because I asked for one orange for a salad dressing. I got two because according to Mark they looked so pretty. So a spare orange was staring at me from the fruit bow. I remembered reading this recipe in a recipe book a colleague had and so decided to utilise the orange to make a cake. You essential boil the orange for an hour then purée it and add it to a simple cake batter.

The results are a lovely moist orange favoured cake. The recipe suggests drizzling with an icing made from orange juice and icing sugar but I did not do this. The cake is orangey enough without it, and besides, I would have needed another orange, and that's how I got into this in the first place!

Whole orange cake

1 small orange
140g caster sugar
3 eggs
85g self raising flour
100g ground almonds
50g butter melted

Put the orange in a pan, cover with cold water and bring to the boil. Cover, reduce the heat and simmer for 1 hour. Remove the orange and allow to cool. To cool quickly run under cold water for a few minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C FAN. Grease a deep 20cm round springform tin and line the base. 

Roughly chop the cooled orange, discarding any pips, and whizz in a food processor until smooth. 

Beat the sugar and eggs until light and fluffy. Gently fold in the flour and the almonds then fold in the orange purée. and melted butter until just mixed. Pour into the prepared cake tin and bake for 45 minutes until the cake is golden and springy. Cool in the tin for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack.

This is a simple cake perfect at any time, especially when you want cake but nothing too sweet or rich. It stays moist thanks to the almonds and is nice cold or warmed through in the oven.

I am going to enter this cake into this months alpha bakes, the letter for this month is 'O', so orange fits the bill perfectly.