Nigella Lawson Flourless Chocolate Orange Cake

Flowerfairy's Note:

From the chocolate cake chapter in her book 'Feast'. This is one of the best chocolate cakes I have ever made. I sometimes add the juice and zest of half a lemon to the batter.

• Total Time: 3 hrs 15 mins
• Prep Time: 2 hrs 30 mins
• Cook Time: 45 mins

Ingredients:

Serves: 12

Yield: 1.0 cake

• 2 small thin-skinned oranges , approx. 375g total weight (or 1 large)
• 6 eggs
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 200 g ground almonds
• 250 g caster sugar
• 50 g cocoa
• orange peel , for decoration

Directions:

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. Then 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.

Reviews

[Emily loves Cakes]

After years of cooking, this was the best cake I have ever made. My friend swears by it and says it can't go wrong. If you like the idea of being a domestic goddess without the mucking about this is the cake for you (especially if you have a Magimix) . Although the oranges and cake need a long cooking time I quite literally settled down in front of a film for the duration so do not be put off, there is minimal concentration involved, just make sure you don't let the oranges dry out in pan. This cake is moist and rich but surprisingly light in texture, I didn't have any coco powder so used G&Bs bitter drinking chocolate and about 1/4 bar of 75% dark chocolate (melted) instead. The remainder of the melted chocolate was used as an icing, with a thick stripe of the blitzed orange down the middle of the (loaf) cake on top of the chocolate (very aesthetic). Once cooled in the fridge it created a thick, glossy chocolaty/orange topping that cracks temptingly as you pass the knife through it. My advice - Make it and eat it!

[Strawberry Bonbon]

Outstanding and very easy to make. I prepared a cream cheese + nutella + cocoa filling (add nutella + cocoa according to taste) as and poured a molten (in the microwave) bar of Lindt 85% Cacao over the top...as if the original recipe wasn't indulgent enough!