2015 Cooking Club Week 4: Almond and Berry Cake

confusticated

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.

mel.b

Yum, will give this a go when I next make something for work

Gloomtastic!

Bought frozen summer berries. Hope they're ok.......

TheHopeful

Looking forward to the pics confusticated

confusticated

They're up now, not sure they'd help much though! My decorative top berries sank into the mix a bit.

Gloomtastic, I usually use frozen berries here, should be grand.

Gloomtastic!

Mrs G! was in the kitchen this afternoon.

Delicious OP, lovely moist bit of cake. Went down a treat with the whole family. Thank you! (Please excuse my daughter's fingers! )

Mellifera

Looks really good Gloomtastic!

Gloomtastic!

Mellifera wrote: »

Looks really good Gloomtastic!

Just as nice on day 2!

The Black Oil

That photo with the hand is a bit scary. It doesn't look like it's attached to a body. :eek:

BaZmO*

Mellifera

Did you ever think confusticated that your list of a lovely tray would lead to a severed hand being posted :-)

confusticated

I forgot to include the severed hand in the list of ingredients, lucky that Gloomtastic had my back!

Mrs Fox

Dadadadum *snap* *snap*
Dadadadum *snap* *snap*
Dadadadum
Dadadadum
Dadadadum *snap* *snap*

Birdsong

Made this cake for dinner last night,and it went down a treat, only thing was the 140 was a bit low on my oven, next time I would increase the temperature I think to 160, will be making it again for sure

tampopo

I made this yesterday. Tis FanTASTic. thank you very much for sharing. Will spend more time in this thread. Deffo...



I need to pay more attention to the recipie though! I mixed one egg before I remembered they should be separated. Mixture was quite runny. And I didn't expect the whites to fluff up as much because I got a bit of yolk in it. But it was just great. Then I was afraid I'd put too much in the tray before adding the fruit. I pressed a few of them down into it to make sure they were covered.
Worked out great in the end. Delicious.


using a quick release tin, I lined it. If I used a fixed tin, would I have to put paper around it or just rub it with margarine??? Then just tip it out?

The Black Oil

tampopo made this for the C&R meet up. It was great.

confusticated

Cheers lads - bit of pride there that my recipe made it to the meetup even if I couldn't!

Tampopo, I haven't tried it with a solid tin, but I'd be inclined to line it because the edges are pretty sticky and I could see it turning upside down and the middle falling out of the tin but the edges staying put, or the berries at the bottom staying stuck on the tin. These are all the reasons I haven't even tried it! But if you do, let me know how it works out!

tampopo

Yeah, confusticated, I would always recommend lining the tin.
I've made this three times now! This day last week...


with both raspberries and blueberries this time....


and then for the get together last evening....
And like you, my fruit at the top fell in! Gloomtastic recommended flouring the fruit first and that may help prevent sinking.


As an aside, I followed your measurements the first times but as ground almond is sold in 200g, I just used that amount and added 50g of self raising flour. The thing I found without doing this was that the cake was rather too moist, like the melted margarine/butter was too much and didn't re-solidify and it was kind of pooling at the base. Anyway, it was a minor adjustment to your original version...
And this is what we tucked into...I couldn't find my scissors to trim the paper. I had to tear it and it went quite low by mistake!


Either way, it was a hit, as you can tell!

I also brought a lemon drizzle cake in the shape of a madeira, 2lb tin job. But I didn't have elderberry cordial so all I could use with alcohol/liqueur equivalent was a drop of port. So the drizzle was purple, but it worked fine. Very fine, in fact!
Make sure and join us next time and thanks again for the recipie...

Question: can you put the berries in frozen, or do you need to let them defrost first?

confusticated

Oh they're grand frozen, I think if you let them defrost they get very mushy.

kylith

Soooo, this is currently in my oven. Turns out that I don't have a tin the right size. No worries, I thought, apparently it doesn't rise. It's three times as high as it was when it went in! I'm seriously worried that it'll escape the tin altogether.

Mystery Egg

Mystery Egg wrote: »

Question: can you put the berries in frozen, or do you need to let them defrost first?

Hey, there is still a health warning on hepatitis on frozen berries ... buy them fresh or freeze them yourself!
In case anyone is reading this and using them!!


That cake looks amazing... gonna have to try it !!

IvyTheTerrible

bluewolf wrote: »

Hey, there is still a health warning on hepatitis on frozen berries ... buy them fresh or freeze them yourself!
In case anyone is reading this and using them!!


That cake looks amazing... gonna have to try it !!

I was under the impression that frozen berries were ok if you cooked them fully (or boiled them for 1 minute before using?
https://www.fsai.ie/faqs/berries_hepatitis_a.html

kylith

I have achieved cake! Probably took twice as long as it should because of the too-small tin issue. I've never been so glad that I'm too lazy to trim the greaseproof paper. It's seriously moist and yes, I had cake for breakfast.

confusticated

It's the weekend, cake is a perfect weekend breakfast! Looks good, thanks for trying it

BaZmO*

Having cake for breakfast is perfectly ok, however, giving food safety advice on the F&D forum is not ok.

kylith

I also had it for lunch

BaZmO*

That's perfectly ok too.

IvyTheTerrible

BaZmO* wrote: »

Having cake for breakfast is perfectly ok, however, giving food safety advice on the F&D forum is not ok.

Sorry, I forgot!

I'm sorry too, please ignore my silly post earlier, I go on auto pilot when I see berries

kylith that cake looks so lovely ... and moist... and tasty
Next on the list for sure

iwantmydinner

Quick/silly question... In the absence of grease proof paper, can I line the tin with tinfoil?

Faith

iwantmydinner wrote: »

Quick/silly question... In the absence of grease proof paper, can I line the tin with tinfoil?

Nope. Tin foil doesn't have any non-stop properties. Better to just grease and flour the tin.

On that note, greaseproof paper isn't really suitable either, as it's also not non-stick. It's baking parchment you need. Greaseproof paper is designed for wrapping up foods, particularly greasy or oily foods.

iwantmydinner

Thanks Faith, I ended up using tin foil in the end and it actually worked well. I only had a large loaf tin to hand to bake it in so it was v useful for lifting the cake out of the tin in once piece. It peeled away from the cake pretty well too. Will definitely be getting a roll of parchment for the next time though.

PS the cake is sublime. Thanks so much for the recipe, it went down a storm on a hungover Sunday!

RuckingSwimmer

After watching GBBO during the week I was in the mood to bake something. Was going to go with lemon drizzle cake but considering I had no lemons that wasn't going to work!

Looking thought the cooking club recipes and came across this one and happened to have ground almonds in the press - it's delicious!! And as my OH has a gluten intolerance, I think it will become a favourite of ours!!

confusticated

Yay, glad you tried it, and liked it!

All the raspberries sank to the bottom, and it took an hour and 15 mins and could have had another 5-10 mins I'd say. But it's moist and delicious. Thanks OP.