2015 Cooking Club Week 4: Almond and Berry Cake

I got this recipe online somewhere a while back when I was looking for a gluten free recipe for a party. I've made a few changes to it and I make it fairly often now. It's generally a crowd pleaser, and I've passed the recipe on to a good few people (including a girl at work today since I brought it in after making it last night!). It's a handy gluten free recipe since it uses ground almonds rather than gluten free flour so you're not buying different flour especially for it. Hope ye enjoy it!

Ingredients:
200g butter/margarine
250g caster sugar
5 eggs, separated
250g ground almonds
1tsp vanilla extract
Approx. 250g mixed berries



Preheat oven to 140 degrees Celsius and grease and line a 10 inch round tin. Springform is handy, but I have also used a loose-bottomed tart tin and large and small loaf tons.

Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Make sure you incorporate as much air as possible when mixing since there's no flour in this recipe so it won't rise much! Add an egg yolk and some ground almonds, mix very well and repeat - do it a bit at a time or the almonds kind of clump together and give it a funny texture. Stir in the vanilla extract. This mixture will be very thick and solid so an electric mixer is handy here. You can do the mixing in with a wooden spoon but I tried it once and really wouldn't recommend it, it's like stirring cement.



Whisk the egg whites in a separate bowl until they're stiff and hold their shape, then fold this carefully into the almond mix using a metal spoon.

Spread just over half the mixture into the tin, and then cover fairly evenly in a single layer of berries. I like to have it almost fully covered, so the amount of berries really depends on the size of your tin. Don't mix them in or they'll break up - well actually, I suppose you could and you'd have a pink cake, but I think it looks nicer with them whole, and the taste of the berries is a better contrast with the cake part. Pour the rest of the mix on top, and scatter a few berries on top of this.

Bake for 45 minutes to an hour, until a knife inserted in it comes out clean. It's pretty forgiving in that it's a very moist cake, so you're not going to dry it out by overcooking. You might burn it though! Allow it to cool before removing the springform sides or turning it out.



I'm posting from my phone so I'll add photos when I can get to a computer, could be tonight or tomorrow though.