Almond Citrus Cake

For another take on using oranges in our baking I decided to mix two of my favourite food together - almonds and oranges. I wanted to use up some oranges but also to bake using less flour and more of other, different ingredients.

Almonds are lovely because they grind down into a floury powder, yet retain that deep taste that goes throughout a dish. And they pair up well with citrus - especially orange. I also like the texture of cake, cookies or other foods like nut loaf when made with almonds.

Cakes are easy to make with nearly any combination of ingredients and are just as easy to freeze for those days when something a little sweet would be nice with your dandelion coffee. 

This recipe is really straight forward and easy to follow - I had my children working with me on this one too - we usually bake something on Fridays for our home school project....

Almond Citrus Cake

2 cups ground almonds

1 cup whole grain spelt flour (or white spelt)

1 large organic orange

3 eggs (I use duck eggs)

1/4 cup maple syrup

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon Apple pie spice

1/4 teaspoon cardamom

pinch salt

7 to 8 tablespoons orange water

Place the orange in a saucepan cover it with water and bring it to a gentle boil for about 1 hour. It should cook gently, otherwise it will be tough. Once boiled, take off the heat and cool. Then cut it open and remove the seeds. The orange then needs to be blended into a pulp together with one or two tablespoon of the water it was boiled in.

Turn on the oven to 180C and prepare a baking tin - I usually use a bundt pan for cakes.

In a deep mixing bowl, place the dry ingredients and sift them together (flour, almond, baking powder, baking soda, spices, salt). Break the eggs in a small bowl and whisk together with the maple syrup. Next, add the wet ingredients (including the orange pulp) to the dry almond mixture and start to mix together - you will need to add the orange water here - add enough to ensure it is wet but not sloppy. Usually around 7 or 8 tablespoons.

Spoon this batter into a prepared tin and bake for about 40 to 45 minutes. Once a toothpick comes out clean - turn off the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes then turn out onto a rack. This is lovely served with orange sections, or drizzled with maple syrup.

Enjoy!

Almond Citrus Cake

More Adventures in Rebel Cooking...

Today for something different I decided to try my hand at making some Biscotti - of course, I've never made this before and actually, have never eaten it either. But, that matters not - because until I started baking, cooking, growing and canning everything for myself - I never ate half of these foods! LOL

So, I dug around for some older recipes for biscotti and then thought about what it would mean when I had to adjust the recipe for spelt flour, fresh organic ingredients, goat's butter, and no sugar. This means I always end up tweaking each recipe quite a bit.

To the point that it no longer resembles anything that I might have started out with. In fact - what I ended up doing was combining the advice of several recipes to see what I might end up with. Having not ever tasted a biscotti before might have been a blessing as well....

Because then I could be fully impartial. Or at least I hoped so.

To make these biscotti I decided to have almond and orange flavours as I have this thing for orange right now and I really like the thought of nuts in any cookie. I also knew they needed to be crisp or hardened in order to dunk them in my coffee...

Here's what I did to make these cookies today....

1/2 cup almonds toasted and chopped

1 cup whole grain spelt flour

1/2 cup butter

1/3 cup maple syrup

1 duck egg

3/4 cup polenta 

2 T orange rind

2 T orange juice

1/2 teaspoon gr coriander

1/2 teaspoon ginger

1 teaspoon baking soda

pinch salt

First I wanted to get each of the wet ingredients into one place. To do this I blended the maple syrup with the butter, added the egg and then the orange juice.

In a separate mixing bowl, I placed the flours, orange rind, baking soda, salt, spices and some of the toasted almonds. I then mixed this with a wooden spoon until it was well blended - adding the wet mixture slowly until a soft dough was formed.

On a piece of parchment paper I sprinkled some flour and the rest of the almonds. Taking half the dough at a time, I rolled it into a sausage shape taking up the rest of the almonds into the dough. I did this twice with each piece of dough.

Then I just placed each of these long sausages onto a baking sheet and into a hot oven for about 25 to 28 minutes. The oven was around 175C. Once these cookies were a little firm I took them out and let them cool for about 10 minutes or so. Then I sliced them into pieces and placed the pieces back into the oven for an additional 10 minutes.

They turned out nicely - a tiny bit crumbly but really fresh and flavourful. I think I will run through this one again to see if I can get them a little harder like a biscuit....Yummy though!

April

Almond & Orange Biscotti