Nigella Lawson Flourless Chocolate Orange Cake

Submitted by Flowerfairy

"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."

 

• Ready In: 3hrs 15mins
• Ingredients: 8
• Yields: 1 cake
• Serves: 12

ingredients

• 2 small thin-skinned oranges, approx. 375g total weight (or 1 large)
• 6 eggs
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1⁄2 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

[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!

 

[Laura Meehan]

Excellent! I made this last night for a party. I am a celiac, and like when I can serve people meals that were gluten-free to begin with. The cake was surprisingly large--most flourless cakes are more dense, and the ground almonds gave it some more height than I had expected, for a more "normal" cake-like texture. I weighed out about 8 ounces almonds and ground them in my food processor. I used an 8 inch cake pan as well. The eight servings are extremely generous--it would easily serve 10 or more (and I am a bit of a dessert hog!). Great served with some whipped cream or cool-whip.

 

[Solveig M.]

A bit too grainy for me. I thought it would be more similar to other flourless cakes in consistency, but a bit too grainy. But great taste and simple to make. I used very finely ground almond flour so don’t think anything was off there.

 

[mmwhyte1]

Fabulous cake. Served it to my foodie and non foodie friends and it was a huge hit. As suggested in earlier reviews I decreased the sugar. I used 125g. I also added 1 tsp of instant expresso powder and 1 tsp of Grand Marnier to the cake batter before baking. It was truly one of the best flourless chocolate cakes I've made.

 

[Mary L.]

This cake was amazing! Soft and moist yet fluffy with a nice crumb... rich and deep in flavour and very decadent. Had a perfect rise and smooth unblemished surface. A cake I will make again and again. Nigella Lawson is amazing.