That isn’t a pun this time. Things in Tucson really are blooming! The acacia trees have gone wild, the jasmine is intoxicating, desert wildflowers are abundant and, more to the point of this post, the citrus trees are at their peak. Closing in a bit more on my point, the orange trees are abloom and their scent is everywhere. It is magical to smell the night air.
What is nice about this time of year is that it coincides with the weather change – the time when we can start spending our evenings outdoors in the front courtyard, enjoying languorous meals, engaging conversation with friends and the perfume of the orange blossoms we love so much. Last evening, our friends Lynn and Lee from New York were with us, and it was our first night dining in the garden this season. It got a little chilly by the time we finished with dessert but no one was complaining, as we sat under the stars by candlelight draped in the soft, fragrant air...
And of course that made Mark think that I should cook something with orange blossom water this week. Have you ever used orange blossom water? I have never made my own orange blossom water because I really want as many oranges to eat when harvesting comes in the winter. Happily, someone makes it for us – somewhere in the India – and it works just fine!
We use it an all variety of ways, but mostly in making desserts. Cakes and tarts are often perfumed with it and we have made strange retro beverages (sometime I must tell you of our foray into Ramos Gin Fizzes…), but mostly we use it in a glaze for cakes. One of our favorite cakes to glaze is a citrus almond cake, the recipe for which was originally Nigella Lawson’s clementine cake and was given to us by Lynn and Lee when we were visiting them once in NY City. They taught us that it didn’t have to be just clementines – that we could use any combination of citrus fruits that we wanted.
At that time, we lived in Maine and the citrus available to us was pretty standard… limes, oranges, lemons, grapefruits and the occasional Meyer lemon. But, now that we live in a citrus haven – and in a neighborhood dubbed ‘the banana belt’ for its mild, citrus-friendly microclimate – the options for the cake are many. The cake itself is moist and wonderful but, for special occasions, we like to top it with orange blossom water glaze, especially now when the oranges are ripe for picking and the orange blossoms are blooming! How fun to have a tree bearing ripe fruit from the year before and blossoming simultaneously for the next year’s bounty!
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| I love that they use Neuschwanstein on their label! |
For today's cake, I used two locally grown oranges and a tangerine. I have used many combinations including fruits such as oranges, lemons, limequats, mandarinquats, kumquats, limes, tangelos, Mexican (key) limes, clementines (only once!) and tangerines. When making this cake, I very rarely use only one kind of fruit.
You will need one pound of fruit to make just the right amount of fruit purée for this cake. After making it now for about 10 years, I finally figured out that I should measure just how much purée comes from one pound of fruit. 1 3/4 cups, if you are curious. As the cooking of the fruit is the most time-consuming part of the process, I will start making tons of fruit purée and sealing it in freezer bags in 1 3/4 cup portions for future cakes, which will make this recipe even easier than it already is. One other thing that I have done to simplify the original recipe is using pre-ground almonds (from Trader Joe’s) as I am pretty sure Nigella had me grinding my own almonds.
So here is another wonderful gluten free dessert, glazed with orange blossom water to celebrate this scented season in Tucson!
~ David
Citrus Almond Cake
1 pound citrus – oranges, tangerines, clementines or a mixture
6 eggs
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon almond extract
2 1/2 cups ground almonds
1 heaping teaspoon baking powder
Place the fruit in a large pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil and cook fruit whole for 2 hours, adding water as needed to keep citrus covered. Drain and let cool. Cut in half across the equator and remove any seeds. Place fruit – flesh, pith and peel – in the bowl of a food processor and purée; you should have 1 3/4 cups puréed fruit.
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Butter a 10-inch springform pan and line the bottom with parchment paper. Beat the eggs in a large bowl with a whisk. Add sugar, almond extract, almonds and baking powder. When smooth, stir in the puréed fruit with a wooden spoon. Pour batter into the prepared pan and bake for one hour, covering the cake with foil at the 40 minute point to keep from getting too dark. Let cool completely before removing from pan.
Glaze
1 cup confectioner's sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons freshly squeezed orange juice
1/2 tablespoon orange blossom water
Place the sugar and orange juice in a saucepan and stir over medium-low heat until all the sugar has been incorporated into the juices and it is of a spreading consistency. Add the orange blossom water and mix in thoroughly. Let cool a little, then pour glaze over cooled cake top and spread to cover. Decorate with slices of kumquat, if desired.
Labels: almonds, citrus, glaze, gluten free, ground almonds, orange blossom water, orange flower water, oranges, tangerines
