For this week’s team meeting I tried this gluten free cake which was described as subtly fragrant, full of zing, moist and delicate and it turned out to be all of these. I decorated the cake with a simple citrus flavoured icing decorated with strips of glace clementine.

The recipe was taken from the Nigella Lawson’s book “At My Table”. This book has a lot of great recipes.

Ingredients  for cake

175 g unsalted butter softened

200 g caster sugar

Zest of one lemon and one orange

4 large eggs

75 g rice flour

1 tsp ground cardamom

2 tsp orange flower water

30 ml lime juice

30 ml orange juice

45 ml lemon juice

200 g almond meal

1 tsp gluten free baking powder

Ingredients for icing

150 g icing sugar, sieved

15 ml each lemon juice and orange juice

1 tsp lime juice

3. Preheat oven to 180°C (less for a fan forced oven, 160°C).
4. Grease a 20 cm springform cake tin and line the base with baking paper.
5. In a large bowl beat butter and sugar and orange and lemon zest with an electric mixer until pale and creamy.
6. Add eggs one at a time beating well, on low speed, after each addition. Note the mixture will look curdled at this stage
7. Beat in the rice flour and ground cardamon then the orange flower water.
8. Add the juices, almond meal and baking powder and fold everything together with a large spoon
9. Pour the mixture into the cake tin and cook, in the middle of the oven, for approximately 35 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out with a few damp crumbs.
10. Allow the cake to cool in the tin while sitting on a wire rack.
11. When completely cool, remove the cake carefully from the tin and top with citrus flavoured icing.

Tips

1. I found the cake needed 40-45 minutes cooking time, but was still very moist, so you need to watch the cake as it cooks.