Flourless Chocolate and Orange cake

Flourless Chocolate and Orange Cake

Ingredients

• 2 small thin-skinned oranges, approx. 375g total weight (or 1 large)
• 6 eggs
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 200 g ground almonds
• 250 g caster sugar
• 50 g cocoa
• orange peel, for decoration

Method
Put the whole orange or oranges in a pan with some cold water, bring to the boil and cook for 2 hours or until soft.

Drain, and when cool, cut the oranges in half and remove any big pips.

Then pulp everything - pith, peel and all - in a food processor.

Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180°C Butter and line a 20cm springform tin.

Add the eggs, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, almonds, sugar and cocoa to the orange in the food processor. Run the motor until you have a cohesive cake mixture, but slightly knobbly with the flecks of puréed orange.
Pour and scrape into the cake tin and bake for an hour, by which time a cake tester should come out pretty well clean. Check after 45 minutes because you may have to cover with foil to prevent the cake burning before it is cooked through, or indeed it may need a little less than an hour; it all depends on your oven.

Leave the cake to get cool in the tin, on a cooling rack. When the cake is cold you can take it out of the tin. Decorate with strips of orange peel or coarsely grated zest if you so wish, but it is darkly beautiful in its plain, unadorned state.