I love the smell and taste of oranges, but never liked orange-y cakes because the wheat-based ones often tasted more of dough than fruit. Luckily, gluten-free fruit cakes are lighter because they use a lot of fruit pulp and nut flour.
This recipe for orange-walnut cake was inspired by one I read on BBC Good Food, which actually uses clementines and almond flour instead. I wanted to keep it easy, so I decided to go with what I had in my pantry and used walnut flour and oranges.
In my experience, walnut and almond flour are quite interchangeable in gluten-free cake recipes, although walnuts have a slightly more dominant taste compared to almonds. The recipe is quite flexible, so feel free to choose any of the two. You can vary the amount of the sugar you like, depending upon how sweet you want your cake to be.
Here it is:
Ingredients:
2 large oranges
4 large eggs
1 lemon, zest and juice
150g ground brown sugar and some more for dusting the cake (I like using brown sugar because it’s not as processed as white sugar. You can use white or caster sugar if you prefer).
175 g walnut flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
100 ml olive oil
Make it:
Place the oranges in a pan and cover with water. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 30 minutes or until the peel is soft. Remove from heat and cool until they are easy to handle.
Cut them in half and remove the pips with the tip of a knife or a fork. Blend them into a paste and keep aside. I blended the oranges with the skin, but you could scoop out the pulp and throw away the peels, if you prefer.
Mix the olive oil, eggs, walnut flour and sugar in a bowl, and add the lemon juice and orange pulp. Mix well.
Heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and in the meantime, line the bottom of an 8-inch cake tin with baking paper.
Pour the cake mixture into the tin and bake for about 40 minutes or until well-risen and the edges shrink away from the cake tin. Remove from oven and cool.
Your gluten-free orange-walnut cake is ready! Dust with powdered sugar and serve with fresh orange wedges.
Want to make a gluten-free plum cake instead? Here’s the recipe.