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Wonderful Cake to Fight the Winter Blues

February 4, 2014 •

Spanish Orange Almond Cake

Span­ish Orange Almond Cake

My friends and I have fallen in love with a dessert from Spain, Orange Almond Cake. It’s a moist gluten-free cake burst­ing with orange fla­vors, and a crunchy almond tex­ture. I made it on request for a friend’s birth­day last month, and since then sev­eral of us have exper­i­mented with dif­fer­ent vari­a­tions on this theme. So far we’ve loved all the ver­sions that we have tried.

Variations on a Theme

My first ver­sion relied heav­ily on the Orange and Almond Cake recipe pub­lished by the James Beard Foun­da­tion. The final results were deli­cious, but the recipe’s rec­om­men­da­tion of a 400 degree oven for one hour or more was too hot, and too long for my Dacor oven. Mid­way through the bak­ing, my nose warned me that the oven was too hot, so I reduced the tem­per­a­ture first to 350 degrees and later on to 325.

The instruc­tion to but­ter and flour the pan for ease of removal did not work well enough. Using the but­tered pan method, my first cake required some dis­crete patch­ing before we served it… We cov­ered up the patch­work using thin slices of an orange dis­played in an attrac­tive pat­tern on top.

Variation #2

For my sec­ond bak­ing exper­i­ment I lined the pan with but­tered parch­ment paper. This allowed me to remove the cake from the pan with­out los­ing any pieces in the process. I also sub­sti­tuted lemon for some of the orange; instead of using two large oranges, I used  one-and-a-half oranges and one full lemon. It was good but we pre­ferred the all-orange recipe.

The sec­ond time I baked the cake, I sep­a­rated the eggs and whipped both yokes and egg whites quite a lot. This made for a higher, fluffier cake that was still plenty moist. My hus­band and I thought this han­dling of the eggs was much bet­ter than the orig­i­nal James Beard recipe.

For my sec­ond attempt I used a spring­form pan lined with parch­ment paper. No pieces were bro­ken when I removed the cake from the pan.

Variation #3

For our Super Bowl party my girl­friend made this cake, using my vari­a­tions. She was the birth­day girl for whom I made the cake last month. She loved it so much that she decided to make it for her next party…

Her cre­ative con­tri­bu­tion was a glaze made of mar­malade and Coin­treau that replaced the whipped cream. Scrump­tious!

 

About This Blog

Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

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