Orange cake with berry whipped cream

I don’t pretend to be a quality home baker because my favorite recipes are the fool-proof, easy ones that are good for impatient people. This seemed to be one of those recipes. It is a NYT recipe; Claudia Roden’s orange and almond cake and is considered a classic that is loved by many.

This is another recipe which I prepared for, but then was dissuaded when my circumstances changed. I had two oranges and a little pint of whipping cream laying around for this cake which needed to be used.

The most time consuming part of this recipe was waiting for the oranges to simmer for two hours. If you want this cake, you better account for that as hands off time which will hold your recipe up. Everything else was really easy, exactly what I look for in baking recipes (-:

I improvised and add mixed berry whipped cream on top along with some of the berry coulis. The mixed berry WC was combination of 1 pint of WC and previously combined 1 cup of melted and blenderized berries, 2 TB confectioner’s sugar, a 1/2 TSP of vanilla bean paste all whipped using my stand mixer.

The orange cake was indeed moist and tasty. It was possibly a little too orangey for me and without the whipped cream, it would be inedible. In the future I might only add 1 orange or 1.5 of the oranges so that the flavor isn’t so “in your face”. I was hoping this would be a delicate orange flavored cake which could be enjoyed in its simplicity alone.

This was also my first time using almond meal to bake. I think that added to the cake’s moistness. Very nice ingredient which I would consider using in a banana bread.