Wonderfully moist, this is as unlike the fluffy, sweet Lemon Cakes of childhood as you're likely to find. The use of complete Lemons in the mixture - peel, pith and all - produces a strongly flavoured cake that practically bites back at you (in the nicest possible way)!
Made using Ground Almonds rather than Flour, and the option of replacing half of the normal amount of Sugar with Splenda instead makes this dietarily sound, as well as being delicious. I've experimented with using Lemons which have been boiled, as in this recipe, and also just processing them without treating them in any way first, on the basis that the boiling process looked back to a period before food processors and was merely a means of rendering the tough skins soft and malleable. In fact, if short of time, you can omit the boiling and simmering stage, but it will give you a slightly more bitter result, as the effect of this step appears to be to take the edge off the bitterness in the pith of the fruit.
An alternative name for the cake would be 'Vanishing Cake', since - as you can see from the picture - if you turn your back on it, half of the cake has disappeared before you know it.....
For one 26 cm diameter cake.
Ingredients: 2 Lemons (Meyer or Amalfi Lemons by preference, but ordinary Lemons from the supermarket will also work perfectly well); 6 Eggs; 250g Ground Almonds; 2-3 drops Almond Essence; 2 tablespoons of Limoncello; 1 teaspoon Baking Powder; 250g Sugar (or 125g Sugar, plus equivalent volume of Splenda); a handful of Slivered Almonds.
Method:
1. Put the Lemons in a saucepan, cover with water, bring to the boil on the stove, and then simmer, partially covered for an hour. Leave to cool.
2. Heat the oven to 180 degrees C.
3. Drain the Lemons, break them open with your hands and pick out and discard any pips. (Either throw away the boiling liquid, or retain to use subsequently as the cooking liquid for any green vegetable).
4. Process the Lemons for a minute in a food processor along with all the other ingredients apart from the Slivered Almonds. Pour this mixture into a spring-form tin, which has either been greased or sprayed with Trennwax.. Make sure the surface of the cake is level, then sprinkle generously with the Slivered Almonds.
5. Bake for an hour in the pre-heated oven. Test for done-ness by pressing lightly on the centre of the top of the cake - if it springs back into place the cake is done; if not, it probably needs slightly longer. NB: I generally find it necessary to cover the top of the cake with foil after it has been in the oven for half an hour, in order to prevent the Almonds from catching, and the top of the cake from colouring too much.
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9 comments:
So funny that you should post this, I was thinking that I should make "the orange cake" with lemons today - it's exactly the same recipe but with oranges (or clementines for a change), although I don't add any kind of essence where you have limoncello. But I see now that an orange liqueur, or perhaps orange blossom essence, would be a good addition. I made a stab at looking for a method, and found a vastly inferior one in N Slater's Kitchen Diaries (flour and less almonds) - so thank you :)
Joanna
I have an abundance of lemons right now so this is a timely recipe. It looks delicious!
IMHO this is better than the Orange Cake, in that there's a bit more going on. The almond flavour is a lot more present, for starters, which plays well with the heft of the lemon. I've added almond essence in this recipe where in previous times they would have used a bitter almond for the same purpose - I believe the ratio was one bitter one to ten normal ones - as a way of bringing out the flavour. Very hard to find these days in general, due to their high level of toxicity, but there is an old fashioned little shop in a small side street in Siena, off to the right just before the Palazzo Chigi Saraceno where they can normally be found....
Do you know the name of this shop in Siena or have any other descriptions of it? Since I will be there in May is it worth a visit there?
Hmmm.....now you're asking! I don't know the name of it, but if you leave the main piazza from its highest side, with the Commune building directly behind you, and go through to the main street beyond, turn left and go steeply uphill for a couple of hundred yards, the Pasticceria in question is in a small side street to the right - it looks like a dead end, but in fact isn't, it's a sort of dog-leg, and the shop is facing you as you leave the main street. If you get as far up on the main street as the Palazzo Chigi Saraceno on the left, you've gone too far. (I hope this isn't as useless as the directions once given to me for a wonderful knife shop in Perugia, which led to a wasted - and knifeless - afternoon....!)
Am wondering, is there a carbohydrate count available?
I've never come across a comprehensive one, but generally work on the basis that flour is 75% carb, sugar is 100% and the greener the vegetable then the lower it is in the carb range (potatoes and parsnips are by far the worst offenders). I do have various bits of data about this which I've accumulated over time, and will try and consolidate them into a post sometime soon...
Any chance that this recipe would work without the Limoncello - we are now living on a pension and have to watch the pennies.
I don't see why not; if the budget will stretch to a couple of tablespoons of cooking brandy as a substitute, that would give you the same depth, even if a slightly dfferent end result. Even withouth, though, it ought to work pretty well.
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