Last week, hubby and I made Clementine Cake for the first time. It came on my radar after we watched the movie “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” a few months back. I looked up recipes – there’s not a lot of variation out there. Hubby is the hands-down baker of this clan, so I always recruit him to help with baked goods.
Here’s how we did it!
I chose to use a combination of Nigella Lawson’s version and a version I found in my Jerusalem: A Cookbook by Yotam Ottozenghi. The main differences are that Nigella’s version is flourless which, with the amount of ground almonds it requires, gives it a texture that might catch some people off guard. The Jerusalem cookbook’s version does include flour, but the flavor of the clementines mostly comes from the zest in the batter and the syrup that is poured over the top of it in the end. I much prefer Nigella’s technique of cooking down several whole clementines in boiling water and using all of that to flavor the cake.
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
You start out by bringing 4-5 clementines (1 lb) up to a boil and then simmer for 2 (yes, two) hours. I kept the lid on and kept my eye on the water level, adding more as needed. There should be enough for them to float around in.
After they’ve cooled down, cut them in half and take out all of the seeds and throw them in a blender.
Blend them up good until it’s a smooth puree. I love this color! Between you and me, I’m loving all of the colors in this entire post! Makes me want to go out shopping for clementine-colored everything.
Now it’s time to put together all of the other ingredients, which are not all pictured here because I thought it would clutter up the picture…and I don’t like clutter.
First, cream 3/4 c. butter with 1 1/4 c. superfine sugar. Slowly add in 5 beaten eggs.
Then pour in the clementine puree and mix until they’re all combined.
Now for the dry ingredients. (yes, I know, the sugar above is dry. just follow along please)
Add 2.5 c. ground almond (I used almond meal from Trader Joes), 3/4 c. flour, and a pinch of salt.
Mix it all up then pour the batter into a well greased and parchment paper-lined springform pan. We decided to lather it in butter and forego the parchment paper but it still required hubby prying the cake off of the bottom of the pan with a sharp knife. Lesson learned? Use the parchment paper!
Both recipes say to bake for 1 hour total, but the two we baked finished up quickly, in 40 minutes. Make sure you check it at around 35 minutes – if it’s not done and the top is getting too brown, cover it up with foil.
After it has cooled down, you get to decide how you’d like to top it. We did one where we dusted it with powdered sugar which was pretty…but hubby is a cake-must-have-frosting kind of person, so he whipped up a variation of Betty Crocker’s 7 Minute Frosting. To that, he added the zest of 1 clementine and the juice of 1/2 of a clementine.
Then he took a few clementine segments and arranged them in a spiral in the center of the cake to pretty it up.
This is super yummy if you slice it, toast it, smother it in butter. Or just eat it as a cake should be eaten.
So moist, and so good!
Enjoy!
1 comment
yum!