damp lemon and almond cake

I rang Mum and asked what she would like me to make for Mother’s Day dessert. She told me she would like something that doesn’t make her feel fat. I went through all my recipe books trying to find a cake that doesn’t make you fat, then I remembered that all cakes make you fat. So then I tried to find a cake that doesn’t create feelings of fatness. I settled on a Nigella Lawson recipe. Oh, okay...

I have mixed feelings about my new book, ‘How To Be A Domestic Goddess.’ It’s my first Nigella experience, and although the recipes look delicious, it gets very tiring wading through the constant erotica in attempt to extract the instructions on how to cook things.

Ingredients:

1 cup soft unsalted butter

¾ cup sugar

4 large eggs

1/3 cup all purpose flour

1  1/3 cups ground almonds

1/2 tsp almond extract

Grated zest and juice and zest of 2 lemons

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Cream together the butter and sugar until almost white. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, adding a quarter of the flour after each addition. When all the eggs and flour have been incorporated, gently stir in the ground almonds, then the almond extract, lemon zest, and juice. 

I can do that.

 

2. Pour the mixture into an 8 inch springform pan, greased and lined with wax paper. Bake for about 1 hour. I say ‘about’ only because ovens seem to vary so violently. I’ve cooked this in one oven when it was finished after 50 minutes; in another it needed 1 hour and 10 minutes. Whichever, after about 30 minutes you may well find you have to cover it loosely with foil; you don’t want the top of the cake to burn.

Hold on, Nigella. I have a feeling that regardless of the ‘violent’ differences that exist oven to oven, the cooking time may be more consistent if you’d given a more accurate description of how much lemon juice to use. Because I find that something that also varies violently is the size of lemons. In my violent oven, the cake took about an hour after being covered after 40 mins.

The cake is ready when the top is firm and a skewer, when inserted, comes out cleanish; you want dampess, but no battery goo. Take the cake out and let it stand for 5 mins or so in the pan. Then turn it out onto a wire rack and leave to cool.

3. Then, preferably, wrap well in tin foil and leave it for a couple of days. Push some confectioners sugar over the cake through a fine sieve or tea strainer when serving. I can’t stop myself murmuring ‘raspberries’ to you, either.

(It took a lot for me to copy down that last part).  

Serves 6-8

Verdict: I elected to serve the cake that day rather than tell Mum she had to wait 2 days before she could eat her cake. It was very damp, in fact I’m not sure it would ever be necessary to wrap it up. In Nigella’s long intro to this cake, she uses words like ‘slab,’ ‘dense,’ ‘sharp-toned meltiness’ and ‘gloriously plain.’ Although I wouldn’t have chosen those words myself, they all stand. The cake is delicious.