Clementine Cake [recipe]

[winterspel]

I love this recipe for Clementine Cake from Nigella Lawson, and I recently mentioned it in a fic. I thought I would share the recipe, in case anyone would like to try it out!

The following is from here, and published in her cookbook How To Eat: Pleasures and Principles of Good Food.

Comments

[elspethsheir]

I adore Nigella Lawson's books. They are so lush themselves! I made her chocolate pavlova once, and oh, YUM.

I haven't tried this one yet, though...

[winterspel]

What I love best about Nigella Lawson is that she clearly loves food, in all its earthy, every day splendor. Sometimes that adoration of good tastes and smells and the sensuality of food gets lost with many chefs and cookbooks. Food preparation does not have to be complex for it to be exciting and wonderful and inviting.

I highly recommend this cake! It's simple, if you have the time to cook & cool the oranges (which doesn't require any supervision, so it can be done while doing other things).

And I love her chocolate pav, also. I made both the pav and her Anglo-Italian trifle for my friend's birthday party this summer and they were both hits!

[miyamiaki]

That sounds so delicious! ♥ Just as it did in your fanfiction! I wonder if I could cut the proportions in half and make a smaller cake though... *Ponders* And whether the almonds are essential in the recepies. *Not to particularly fond of nuts* ^-^;;; I swear I'm trying to ruin the beautiful recepie, maybe the almond wouldn't be so bad ground? I'll figure it out when I try to make one. o(><)o *Saves it to memories*

[winterspel]

I keep forgetting to reply to some of my comments. *sorry sorry*

This recipe really is delicious! I'm afraid, though, that you must use the almonds; they are essential because it is a flourless recipe, so there is nothing else to substitute, and if you used flour instead of the nuts it would totally throw it off because flour has a different chemistry with the rest of the ingredients than these ground nuts have. It shouldn't bother you too much though. *I hope* They're not overwhelming, or anything, and they are ground up so no big chunks.

I'm sure you could cut the proportions, though, if you wanted a smaller cake, but in that case, be careful of the cake pan you cook it in so that it's in a smaller pan or your cake will be very thin and may not hold together well.

Let me know what happens if you try it out! :D

[miyamiaki]

I didn't even notice it was a flourless recepie, but I'm sure that I would mind the almonds if there's no big chunks since it's really the texture I dislike.
I'll try making it in half the proportion, but I need to find a smaller pan. I made that mistake you mentioned when I made a Christmas cake last year. *Pouts* It was a Japanese recepie so I had to convert all the measurement and didn't take into account that our cake pans are considereably larger... ^-^;;;

But I'll be sure to let you know how it turns out when I try it! Thanks for the tips! ♥ *Hugs*

*Sorry, I have a wireless keyboard and it doesn't pick up once in a while, becoming the mess I posted earlier.* *Sweatdrops*

[momsalive1]

**cuts and pastes**

This sounds great - thank you!! I got here from elspeheir's journal, which I can never remember how to spell.

[winterspel]

Welcome! Enjoy -it's a fab recipe and not hard at all. :)

[ilovechocolates]

winterspel, i finally made your clementine cake today! XD here's a picture of how it turned out...the edges burned a bit but i have a strange affinity for slightly burned baked goods. ^^:

[winterspel]

Oh, Nancy, you don't know how gleeful I am that you made the cake and that you enjoyed it! :) Thank you so much for sharing that gorgeous photo (it looks so good I want to take a bite out of it!) and sharing your experience.

I imagine that you could definitely make this without sugar (using a sugar substitute, right?), but you'd probably have to play around with it to get the amounts right because honestly I'm not sure how sugar figures into the recipe on a chemical level (because it's a flourless cake). Give it a try and let me know how it turns out! I'd be happy to add your notes to Nigella's recipe. :)