Almond Cake
Sun 13 Jan 2008A recent acquisition has been The Complete Traditional Recipe Book
and I was pretty keen to give something a go. Of course, by the time you get to Sunday afternoon you are thinking about cake (hmm, maybe I think about cake all the time) but I also wanted something a bit ... quick and dirty.And I found it ... a plain, simple almond cake. So easy as to be trivial ...
Mix 225g butter with 225g sugar and then add in four eggs. Add 225g of self raising flour, 50g of ground almonds and ... that's it. If you have some almond essence to hand (I didn't) you might care to add a teaspoon of that.
Pour into a greased tin (I used a one pound loaf tin - and had some mixture left over for muffins) and bake. Now ... the recipe said to bake for an hour and a half at 160C. Because I have a fan oven I turned it down to somewhere between 140 and 150C. The muffins took about half an hour and my cake about an hour. So best to keep an eye on it and make a judgement call.
It's a simple cake, with a fine crumb. It kept really well - the almonds help to keep it moist, and it has served well as mid-morning snacks throughout the week. The book says that the recipe is reminiscent of eighteenth century cakes that would have been served with coffee. Of course, if you wanted to take it with your afternoon sherry or madeira I'm sure it would go just as well.tagged with:
cake, 
baking, 
almonds
Stumble It!
posted by Alex at 1:21 pm
Stumble It!
2 Comments:
I have made this ceke a few times and it is good and easy to make. I have tried adding orange zest and dried cranberries, this makes a delicious alternative to Christmas cake. I fil it with a citrus creamcheese mixture which I make roughly like this. Mix 1 tub of mascapone with 1 small tub of cream cheese add the zest and juice of an orange and lemon and add icing sugar to taste. Use to top and fill the cake
The addition of the dried cranberries certainly sounds festive!
The advantage of a good plain cake like this is that you can incorporate other ingredients really easily.
And the topping sounds like a very low hassle alternative to icing!
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