This is Not a Food Blog but Here’s a Flourless Orange Cake Recipe Anyway……

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Baking, Cake, Cook, Dairy Free, Flourless Cake, Gluten Free, Jamie Oliver, Nigella, Recipe

Flourless Orange Cake
(Image by Mark O’Meara for Taste.com)

Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie.(Jim Davis)

I know, I know – I said this wasn’t a food blog. Despite the fact that I gave you Nigella’s Chocolate Orange Cake recipe at the beginning of the month (which is sooooo good!). And, not to mention my post about Jamie Oliver’s best ever Spiced Slow-cooked Lamb Shanks. And, then yesterday’s Chocolate Seed & Nut Balls. I wasn’t lying. Honest. But with this dairy-free jaunt that I’m on, one of the biggest things you miss out on are desserts. Think of all the dairy – milk, butter, cream, sour cream, yoghurt, crème fraîche, buttermilk, cream cheese, ice cream – that goes into most desserts.

We don’t eat a lot of dessert, here at Casa TSL – but when the opportunity presents itself, I wanna’ indulge… And the best way to ensure I can do that is make the dairy free dessert myself.

As it so happens, LM and I have a fairly full social calendar coming up this weekend and I have committed to ‘bring a plate‘ to a couple of our functions. This Flourless Orange Cake looks like just the ticket, I reckon. It’s both gluten- and dairy-free.

Flourless Orange Cake

(serves 12)

Cake
Melted butter (or butter-substitute), to grease
2 oranges
3 eggs
215g (1 cup) caster sugar
300g (3 cups) almond meal
1 tsp gluten-free baking powder

Orange Syrup

1 orange
155g (3/4 cup) caster sugar

1. Preheat oven to 170°C. Brush a round 22cm (base measurement) springform pan with melted butter to lightly grease. Line base with non-stick baking paper.
2. Place the oranges in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring to the boil over medium heat. Cook for 15 minutes or until tender. Drain. Return to pan and cover with cold water. Bring to the boil and cook for 15 minutes (this will reduce the bitterness of the peel). Refresh under cold water. Drain. Coarsely chop oranges. Remove and discard any seeds.
3. Place the orange in the bowl of a food processor and process until smooth.
4. Use an electric beater to whisk the eggs and sugar in a bowl until thick and pale. Add the orange, almond meal and baking powder and gently fold until just combined. Pour into prepared pan.
5. Bake for 1 hour or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Set aside for 15 minutes to cool.
6. Meanwhile, to make the orange syrup, use a zester to remove the rind from the orange. (Alternatively, use a vegetable peeler to peel the rind from orange. Use a small sharp knife to remove white pith. Cut rind into thin strips.) Juice orange.
7. Place rind in a saucepan of boiling water and cook for 5 minutes or until soft. Drain. Return to pan with orange juice and sugar. Place over low heat and cook, stirring, for 2-3 minutes or until the sugar dissolves and the syrup thickens.
8. Turn cake onto a serving plate. Use a skewer to gently prick the top. Spoon over syrup. Cut into wedges to serve.

I found this recipe on Taste.com. For those of you outside Australia, Taste.com is a fab’ site for every-day recipes. Not too fancy-schmancy, but loads of great ideas. This particular recipe has had 111 comments about how yummy it is – so, I think I’m onto a winner!

Not Quite Nigella (But Her Flourless Chocolate Orange Cake Recipe)

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Birthday Cake, Chocolate, Chocolate cake, Dairy Free, Flourless Chocolate Cake, Flourless Chocolate Cake Recipe, Gluten-free diet, Gwynganna, Healthy, Nigella, Nigella Lawson, Orange, Recipe

Nigella Lawson Image from ‘Nigella Feasts’
(Image sourced from here)*

I don’t believe in low-fat cooking. (Nigella Lawson

So, for those of you who didn’t know, last week I was up at the Gwynganna Health Retreat on a gluten-free, dairy-free, red meat-free, sugar-free, caffeine-free, alcohol-free 7-day detox programme. Sound a little grim? It wasn’t. It was fantastic and I loved almost all of it**. Truly.

Don’t panic – I’m not planning on boring you with all the details. The thing is though – when you do a detox like that, you come back energised and determined to be healthy and stay in this semi zen-like state you worked so hard to achieve. For me, that’s just a little harder than it sounds.

Case in point – Wednesday was LM’s birthday. Tomorrow we have a few of our nearest and dearest coming over for a celebratory spot of afternoon tea. Being the wannabe domestic goddess that I am, I can’t let the occasion pass without creating a wee tasty something for my chocoholic birthday boy, can I?

So, I went a-googling. I wanted a gluten-free, dairy-free chocolate cake. Guess what I found? Trusty Nigella, the queen of over-indulgence, almost the last person I would have expected to help me, has the most positively commented upon version of the cake I sought. As it so happens, despite having three of Nigella’s cookbooks gracing my cookbook shelf, I do not own the one from whence the recipe came…

Nigella Lawson ‘Feast’
(Image from here)

Now, I know Nigella has her detractors. My Mum is not a fan. But – damn-it, Janet! – her recipes work. I’ve never had a dud. She’s up there with Nigel (Nigel Slater) and Delia (Delia Smith) for me as never-fail recipe providers. I just never expected her to give me a gluten AND dairy free cake recipe.

I eat healthily. It`s just that I eat enough for five healthy people. (Nigella Lawson)

So as I write this, I’m boiling oranges in preparation for making Nigella Lawson’s Flourless Chocolate Orange Cake tomorrow. Here’s the recipe, if you’d like it:

Nigella Lawson’s Flourless Chocolate Orange Cake

2 navel oranges (approx 375g in total)
6 eggs
200g almond meal
250g caster sugar
50g cocoa
1/2 tsp bicarb
1 tsp fleur d’oranger (orange flower water), optional
1 tsp baking powder
Orange peel for decoration

1. Put the whole orange or oranges in a pan with some cold water, bring to the boil and cook for 2 hours or until soft.

2. Drain, and when cool, cut the oranges in half and remove any big pips.

3. Pulp everything – pith, peel and all – in a food processor.

4. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180°C Butter and line a 20cm springform tin.

5. Add the eggs, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, almonds, sugar and cocoa to the orange in the food processor. Run the motor until you have a cohesive cake mixture, but slightly knobbly with the flecks of puréed orange.

6. Pour and scrape into the cake tin and bake for an hour, by which time a cake tester should come out pretty well clean. Check after 45 minutes because you may have to cover with foil to prevent the cake burning before it is cooked through, or indeed it may need a little less than an hour; it all depends on your oven.

7. Leave the cake to get cool in the tin, on a cooling rack. When the cake is cold you can take it out of the tin. Decorate with strips of orange peel or coarsely grated zest if you so wish, but it is darkly beautiful in its plain, unadorned state.

Flourless Chocolate Orange Cake
(Image sourced from here)

I’ll let you know how it turns out! If anyone has a fab’ gluten-free, dairy-free chocolate cake recipe that they’d like to share – I’m ALL ears!

*Can anyone tell me how Nigella gets her coloured cardigans to nip in at the waist like that? It may just keep me awake wondering! Hollywood tape?

**There were leeches