Gâteau à l'Orange

I shall be baking four cakes in the next couple of days which is rather more than normal. They are for a tea party on Saturday afternoon at my mother's house so must keep and must be able to travel, so I've decided to do two orange cakes and two chocolate chestnuts. The orange ones will be done today.

This recipe is from one of my favourite cookery books: The Book of Jewish Food by Claudia Roden. I first saw it over someone's shoulder on the top deck of 73 bus into work. It's that kind of book, the kind of book you read for pleasure. It is a very personal book, a history of a culture through food, with wonderful pictures, some jokes and fantastic recipes.

In particular I love the cake recipes which are generally simpler than the norm and work beautifully. There's the one I'm using today, a brilliant Danish Apple cake, a moist and dark chocolate almond cake. It's excellent if you want to do gluten-free cakes as many feature almonds not flour.

Nigella does a similar cake to this one in How to Eat featuring clementines. I prefer this one, I think, because somehow the orange has a rather more grown-up flavour, more bite to it. At first it seems odd to puree the whole orange, peel and all and use it in a cake, but once you've done it, you see what genius it is. The cake is moist, rich and wonderfully orangey. I've always wondered if you could do the same with lemons but I suspect you'd have to use more sugar and that would unbalance the texture. Maybe one day I shall experiment but not for Saturday's tea party.

Gâteau à l'Orange

Serves 12 or more

2 oranges
6 eggs
250g (9oz) sugar
2 tablespoons orange blossom water
1 teaspoon baking powder
250g (9oz) blanched almonds, coarsely ground

Wash the oranges and boil them whole for 1 1 ⁄2 hours or until they are soft.

Beat the eggs with the sugar. Add the orange blossom water, baking powder and almonds and mix well. Cut open the oranges, remove the seed, and purée in a food processor. Mix thoroughly with the egg and almond mixture and pour into a 23cm (9 inch) oiled cake tin dusted with matzo meal or flour - preferably non-stick and with a removable base. Bake in a pre-heated 375°F/190°C/gas 5 oven for an hour. Let it cool before turning out.