Mandarin Hazelnut Cake

Everyone loves the famous Orange Almond Cake, Claudia Roden’s recipe from her book A New Book of Middle Eastern Food. 

It’s gluten and dairy free, and that is why in Australia it’s the staple of many cafes and restaurants,  although I would hazard a guess that not many people would know of its origin! I started cooking this recipe many years ago and I still have the original Book of Middle Eastern Food, albeit well thumbed and food stained..

In this recipe I have changed the two main ingredients. I substituted mandarins for oranges and hazelnuts for almonds. I still follow the basic recipe, cooking the mandarins whole and blitzing them in the food processor. I also halved the ingredients to make a smaller cake – it’s still a decent size.

The result was a fragrant mandarin scented cake, that was very nutty – I encouraged the nuttiness by roasting the ground hazelnuts first.

For a version of the original, see here for this SBS recipe.

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3 small mandarins, washed
150g ground hazelnuts
125 g caster sugar, plus extra for dusting
3 free-range eggs
1 tsp baking powder
Whole hazelnuts for decorating
Candied mandarin segments and peel for decorating*
Dark chocolate for drizzling

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Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C fan-forced. Grease  and line the base of a 18cm springform cake tin with baking paper. You don’t need to line the sides – just grease well.

Bring a large saucepan of water to the boil. Wash the mandarins and cook in the boiling water for about 1/2 hour, or until soft.

While the mandarins are cooking, spread the ground  hazelnuts on a baking tray lined with baking paper, and roast in the oven for about 10 minutes until the hazelnuts are lightly toasted and smelling nutty!

Remove the mandarins and allow to cool to room temperature, then put the whole mandarins in a food processor and blitz to a rough purée.

Put the caster sugar and eggs into the food processor and pulse.

Add the ground hazelnuts and baking powder, and pulse quickly to mix.

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 1-1¼ hours, until  a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Allow to cool before carefully removing the sides from the springform tin. If you can remove the cake from the base, that’s great – but if it’s too moist, don’t worry!

Decorate, if you like, with whole hazelnuts and candied mandarin pieces and peel. Serve with cream, sour cream or creme fraiche.