Lemon Tunisian Orange Cake
The Perfect Garden Cake
The Perfect Garden Cake
Lemon Tunisian Orange Cake
I love this cake by my friend Aaron Bertelsen, who has penned two books I love. The Great Dixter Cookbook is the first. This recipe appears in his second book Grow Fruit and Vegetables in Pots: Planting Advice & Recipes from Great Dixter. This cake is perfect and satisfactory at any time of the day. Lunch in the garden. Morning after yoga with the girls. A simple dessert for dinner with a stew in winter or in the dead of summer. The addition I bring to the party is about 3 pinches (ish) of Maldon Sea Salt added to the batter. Pull out the scale for this one, I do. The only tricky bit to this recipe is that it is started in a cold oven. I imagine his friend that wrote it, does it this way, because she finds she can whip it together the night before fast and throw it in the cold oven without having to pre-heat it. That way when it bakes and chills in the fridge wrapped overnight, it will be ready for company the next day. Don’t forget to food process your breadcrumbs! You want them fine and not chunky.
In the video above, the flowers cut from my garden serve as a fun mix with the sugar flower that we sculpted for September, the large pink dahlia on the left.
Preparation 20 minutes, plus overnight chilling
Cooking: 50 minutes
Adapted from Aaron Bertelsen
Cake Ingredients:
2 ½ tablespoons fresh white breadcrumbs (I use the best sour dough bread I can get my hands on and pulse it to a fine texture using a food processor)
100 grams / 3.5 oz (1 cup) ground almonds/almond meal. (I use Bob’s Red Mill Almond Flour)
200 grams/ 7 oz. (1 cup) granulated sugar (another name for granulated sugar is Caster Sugar)
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder (I use the original Clabber Girl)
200 ml / 7 fl. Oz/ (scant 1 cup) Sunflower Oil, plus extra for greasing
4 eggs
Grated zest of 1 orange (Be mindful that you are going for a big orange and a big lemon size, so you may want to do 2 etc. if they are small lemons to make up for the lack of size.)
Grated zest of 1 lemon (I do Meyer Lemons when I have fruit on my trees/ when they’re in season)
3 generous pinches (ish) of Maldon Sea Salt
Candied Orange Slices to Decorate (My Recipe to Follow)
For the Syrup
100 g/ 3.5 oz (1/2 cup) granulated sugar
Juice of 1 orange and 2 lemons (Be mindful that you are going for a big orange and a big lemon size, so you may want to do 2 etc. if they are small lemons to make up for the lack of size.)
4 cloves
1 small cinnamon stick ( I use Ceylon cinnamon sticks)
For the Candied Orange Slices
1 orange
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
Grease and then double line the bottom and sides of an 8 inch loose bottom springform cake pan with parchment paper. The one I use is 9 inches. We use what we have!