Orange Cake
There’s something special about oranges. Such a simple fruit yet, bursting with flavor and possibility, they remind me of winter, specifically Christmas.
A while back I told ~M, one of my favorite readers, that I would post my version of Claudia Roden’s
2 oranges
4 eggs
¾ cup agave nectar
2 cups blanched almond flour
½ teaspoon celtic sea salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
- Wash the oranges and boil them whole (peel and all) for 1 ½ hours, or until soft
- Place whole oranges (peel and all) in a food processor
and blend until smooth
- Process in eggs, agave, almond flour, salt and baking soda until well blended
- Pour batter into a greased 9-Inch round cake pan
- Bake at 375° for 45-50 minutes, until a toothpick stuck in the center comes out clean
- Cool in the pan for 2 hours
- Serve
This cake was also popularized by Nigella Lawson, though her version is made with clementines. I think it would be fun to make this with lemons, though imagine some adjustments would need to be made if experimenting with this more intensely sour citrus fruit.
Whether served at Thanksgiving, Channukah or Christmas, this cake ends a holiday meal with flare. Enjoy!
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Subscribe by Email to elanaspantry.com:Posted on November 18, 2008 in desserts by Elana
you might also like: Honey Cake
or Lee’s Banana Birthday Cake
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36 comments for the post “Orange Cake”
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Don’t forget Pesach! :) I made it for Pesach last April with meyer lemons and used 1.25 cups sugar instead of the 1 cup + 2T sugar for oranges. You could probably even sweeten it less with meyer lemons (as opposed to regular lemons). I’ve also made it with satsumas. I think lime, lemon-lime, or even grapefruit could be excellent, too! I love the smell of the citrus simmering! By the way, this seems to be a very “forgiving” recipe since I used relatively course almond meal (with the skins on) and it worked beautifully and tasted great, albeit rich!
Thanks so much for posting this!
November 18th, 2008 6:41 pm
I make this same (almost) cake, using 1 2/3 c. almond flour. Also I use three eggs, but mix the egg yolks and sugar first, then add the fruit puree and almond flour, and then the stiffly beaten egg whites. I make it frequently using two or three lemons. I don’t make any other changes, but it is tart!
November 18th, 2008 8:33 pm
I am SO going to make this tomorrow morning!! YUM!!
November 18th, 2008 8:44 pm
SO delightful-looking!!
November 19th, 2008 5:25 am
Oooohhh.. My boys love orange.
When do you peel the orange? Or does the whole
orange, peel and all, go into the blender?
November 19th, 2008 5:43 am
Just making sure… since you’re cooking the oranges whole, I assume you put the whole orange (unpeeled) into the food processor??
Thanks.
November 19th, 2008 6:44 am
This looks so wonderful and simple! I am going to try it this weekend. I am dreaming of a chocolate drizzle on top…. yum…
November 19th, 2008 7:06 am
This sounds great & the picture looks irresistable! One question, though, do you blend the oranges with peel & pith? Thank you for all the wonderful recipes!
November 19th, 2008 10:00 am
Hi Elana-
First I want to say I made your chocolate chip cookies(the ones with the grapeseed oil) the other day and they were FABULOUS! Thank you!
Question: In this recipe did you peel the oranges?
November 19th, 2008 10:09 am
Hi there! I’ve just found your site and I can’t wait to try *everything*. My step-mother is on a gluten-free diet, I’m diabetic, and we’re both very much into healing through food.
Before I dive in to this one I wanted to make sure:
when you say boil and process the oranges “whole” you mean peel and everything?
Thanks!
Miranda
November 19th, 2008 10:25 am
Sheer bliss! We all adore oranges or anything citrus-related. This recipe many times simplified reminds me of Sicilian almond cake sans marzipan.
Mmmm, I’m trying it this weekend….Thank you so much for sharing.
Mariella
P.S. Love your photography!
November 19th, 2008 1:23 pm
Hello,
I was excited to find your beautiful website which is very similar to the way I need to eat (minus so much sugar). I made your fig newton recipe, without the sencond sweetener, and was dismayed to find how oily the cookie “dough” was. Have you tried it with less oil? I did use your recommended brand of almond flour.
Magma
November 19th, 2008 3:51 pm
When I make this recipe, I food process the entire citrus (skin, pith, inside) minus the seeds/pips.
November 19th, 2008 8:24 pm
Wow Elana,
This sounds simply yummy. I love that you used almond flour and it intrigues me that it doens’t need other GF flour combinations to make it work. so simple! Plus, no xanthan gum. wow. This is such a healthy and yummy looking cake for the holiday season. thank you so much. You have sold me on almond and coconut flours - gonna order some soon.
thanks,
sarah
November 19th, 2008 8:34 pm
This cake looks so moist, perhaps some fresh cranberries and toasted walnuts? A drizzle of icing would be perfection.
November 20th, 2008 1:06 pm
the flavor of this cake is great. but the outside burned a bit t 375 for 45 minutes. to prevent this, would i turn the oven down and bake longer? thank you.
November 21st, 2008 10:41 am
As soon as I saw this, I immediately thought of Nigella’s recipe which I have always pondered, but never tried. Yours looks easier. I have two oranges that I bought to make wassail for my support group’s open house tomorrow (that recipe is from Stephanie’s A Year of Crockpotting blog, http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/), but I am very tempted to make this recipe this evening and buy more oranges tomorrow morning. ;-) Not sure if I have enough almond flour though. :-( Ordering that is on my “to do” list. If not, I will make this VERY soon. Thanks!
November 21st, 2008 4:44 pm
I’ve made at least half of the recipes on this site and only use Oliovita delicate and mild olive oil for baking rather than the grapeseed oil and love it. The oil is so light and basically has no taste.
November 21st, 2008 4:51 pm
~M -Thanks for your comment and for inspiring me to post this recipe. I am looking forward to trying it with other citrus!
Pat -Your lemon version sounds delicious.
Chrissy -Hope you liked it as much as we did :-)
Veggiegirl -Thanks!
Ruth -Peel and all; thanks for pointing out that the instructions weren’t clear enough, I edited that to be more straightforward.
Sue -Peel and all :-)
Robin -I like the chocolate drizzling idea.
Laurinda -Yup, peel and all; you are welcome!
Cate -You are welcome, and no, don’t peel the oranges.
Miranda -Yes the whole thing; glad you found us here :-)
Mariella -You are welcome; thanks for your comment.
Magma -Removing/substituting even one ingredient in a recipe will change the entire recipe and you may need to make significant adjustments when doing so –as you are basically experimenting and will achieve varied (and not always good) results. In this case, I would just recommend rolling the dough in a bit more almond flour to make it drier. This is generally the trick for oily dough (no matter what type of flour you are using).
~M -Thanks.
Sarah -Thanks for your comment. Have fun baking sans the xanthum.
Hayley -That sounds delicious!
melissa -Thanks for your comment. I would first get an oven thermometer to see if your oven is baking correctly at the temperature it is set to. If it is, then I would remove the cake at 35-40 minutes and reduce the baking time, rather than turning down the heat. Also, you could try to bake it on a lower oven rack than you did the first time…Hope this helps and let me know how it goes.
Shirley -Thanks for another great comment. Enjoy the cake!
Terri I like the idea of using a mild olive oil in place of the grapeseed. Thanks for sharing your substitution tip.
November 21st, 2008 11:21 pm
I finally found agave nectar in a health food store, but could someone please tell me how much ml 1 cup of agave nectar exactly is?
And does anyone know how much grams are in 1 cup of almond flour, I think it is around 100 grams per cup. It would be greatly appreciated if i could get the precise numbers ;)
November 22nd, 2008 12:22 pm
Looks fantastic! Can’t wait to make it :) Thanks for all your recipes. I love that they are wholesome, flavorful & satisfying. I’m always looking forward to browsing through all of them, both old and new! I’m grateful to find other people who eat similarly & are as passionate about food as I am.
November 22nd, 2008 1:10 pm
fran -I take it you are not baking in the U.S. You can go to this website for conversions; I found it by googling “convert ml to cups.” For the exact weights of specific ingredients I would weigh them on a scale and then use the aforementioned chart to convert the recipes, though if you don’t have a cup to measure out the ingredients, then this wouldn’t work so it might not be a helpful suggestion. You could always post this question in my forums, there are lots of helpful folks over there and many from Europe.
MamaBear -Thanks for your lovely comment; I also enjoy connecting with people passionate about food.
November 23rd, 2008 9:58 pm
I just made this cake, and my house smells wonderful. When I boiled the oranges, I threw in half a dozen whole cloves. When everything was done boiling, I tossed the cloves in the food processor too - not sure if they’ll make a difference in the cake since I probably boiled all the flavor out of them, but I couldn’t help it. It’s just such a lovely combination of flavors and scents. I can’t wait to try the cake! I’m taking this and another non-GF cake to work tomorrow for my birthday - let’s see which one goes faster! :) Thanks, Elana!
November 24th, 2008 2:09 pm
Someone wrote that they loved your pumpkin apple soup recipe. Could you post or send it to my e-mail. I’d love to serve it at our thanksgiving meal.
Thanks for your website and fabulous recipes!
November 26th, 2008 7:07 am
Kim -I bet that smelled amazing, though sounds as if it might taste a little too strong –did it work?
Chris -I haven’t posted a pumpkin apple soup recipe, though wish I had one, it sounds divine.
November 26th, 2008 12:32 pm
Elana - Thank you so very much for this yum recipe! Our whole house smells like lovely oranges - I added whole cloves and a cinnamon stick to the boiling water to really take advantage of the citrus fragrance :)
December 4th, 2008 5:59 pm
SherryQ,
Thanks for your comment and hope it tasted as good as it smelled.
Elana
December 6th, 2008 7:01 pm
I tried making this on Thanksgiving and I almost had it, except that when I tried to transfer the cake from the pan to the cooling rack it broke in half:( I was really disappointed, but I want to try it again, even just for the smell of warm citrus. What can you recommend for me so that this doesn’t happen again. In the old days I would have “floured” my pan, but that’s not a possibility anymore. I’d really appreciate the input. Thanks!
December 8th, 2008 9:12 am
carolyn,
Thanks for your comment. I changed the instructions to read “cool the cake in the pan” after you left it. I think this will do the trick. Let me know how it goes.
Elana
December 8th, 2008 5:34 pm
Just a note to Carolyn, Elana gave you a solution for this cake :-), but I just wanted to mention that you can still flour your pans even if GF. After you grease them, you just pour a little of your GF flour into the pan and tilt it and turn so the flour will go over the greased area. Then dump out the excess. (It shouldn’t be much left to dump out, if any.)
December 8th, 2008 6:05 pm
Shirley,
Thanks for the great tip. You can also grease the pan and then flour it with almond flour, that also works quite well.
Elana
December 8th, 2008 8:19 pm
Thanks Elana. One last thing, to grease the pan or to not grease the pan? That is the question.
December 9th, 2008 10:44 am
Duh, I just read you and Shirley last posts. Thanks for the tip. I’ll try it again. The smell of warm citrus was amazing!
December 9th, 2008 10:45 am
carolyn,
Good luck and let us know how it goes this time.
Elana
December 9th, 2008 1:27 pm
Thank you so much for this wonderful recipe. I decided it would also make beautiful carrot spice muffins - so I went with your original recipe and added cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg alone with a few grated carrots and a couple of handfuls of raisins. You may need to increase the almond flour by 1/2 cup. They were fabulous and very moist.
Next up - banana cranberry oat muffins using this as the basis and certified GF oats. Thankyou!
December 13th, 2008 6:01 am
Dawn,
That sounds amazing!
Elana
December 16th, 2008 11:33 am