Blood orange, lemon and almond cake

On a recent visit to my local greengrocers I was pleased to see that blood oranges were in season, juicy sweet and full of orangey flavour they make a great addition to the fruit bowl. Combined with a classic lemon this is a gorgeous zesty bake, the blood orange adds a beautiful orange hue to the cake, this recipe is based on Nigella Lawson's clementine cake which in turn is based on Claudia Roden's orange and almond cake, I am pretty sure Fiona Cairns has a version too.

This recipe is reliable and naturally gluten free, its a plain Jane of cake that packs a glorious flavour punch, juicy, zesty and ever so slightly adult. I couldn't resist decorating it with the little viola's coming into flower in the garden, those little cute faces calling out to me.

The cake require no real skill and I now have a short cut route of cooking the orange and lemon, rather than boiling in water for a couple of hours,you can avoid the steamy kitchen by microwaving in a covered bowl for about 8 -10 minutes until soft. Easy !

Its great to be able to use the lovely unsung blood orange in a recipe and a great celebration of spring. You can substitute any citrus fruit, lemons, clementines, all work fine, just keep the quantity roughly the same.

What you need

• 1 orange and 1 lemon, ideally organic and unwaxed (if you can't get blood orange ordinary works fine)
• 6 eggs - large free range 
• 220g caster sugar
• 250g ground almonds
• 1 tsp baking powder
• pinch of sea salt
• Springform cake tin - approx 8" diameter, oil sprayed
• Icing sugar to dust
• Violas

What you do

• Firstly you need to cook the orange and lemon, you can either boil in water for approx 2 hours until soft, or alternatively microwave for about 8-10 minutes
• Allow the soft whole fruit to cool and cut open to remove any pips.
• Preheat the oven to 170c fan / gas mark 5
• Now pulp in the food processor until a fine puree
• Now add the other ingredients, pulse again until you have a smoothish mixture
• Pour into your prepared tin and smooth the top
• Bake for approx 50 minutes until a cocktail stick comes out clean and the cake is a gorgeous golden colour, cover with foil if it appears to be darkening too quickly
• Allow to cool full in the tin
• Dust with icing sugar and serve

Serve on a platter or cake stand strewn with viola's, spring has sprung !

I am entering this post in for the blog challenge Simple and in Season created by Renbehan and hosted this month by Utterly Scrummy Food