Orange and Almond Cake with Passion Fruit Icing

So it was Mothers Day yesterday and I took it upon myself to make it an opportunity to make some love in the kitchen. Oo-err!

After seeing Lisa Faulkner on This Morning, introducing her new book, Tea and Cake, and making a gorgeous looking cake with Mothers Day as inspiration, I decided to try it out myself.

The finished result!

The cake was a joy to create, and the most time consuming bit that I found was boiling the oranges and, of course, whipping the eggs and caster sugar together, which always takes a while. Thank goodness for electricity!

My favourite part was making the icing. And tasting it along the way..!

The passion fruit added gave it such beauty. It was sweet, but not sickly, and to be honest I could have eaten just that on its own with a spoon. My cousin, Damien, commented that it tasted just like yoghurt.

Yum...

As you will see in the recipe below, adding butter to the icing is optional, and I did, just to make it a little smoother. It was stunning.

The cake went down a treat, with myself and my auntie preferring the icing, but mum and my cousins preferring the sponge. The orange made the sponge a little wet, more like a pudding sponge, so I'll be trying out a normal sponge cake recipe with the icing as a topping in future, just to see the difference, and I shall definitely be buying Lisa's Tea and Cake book to try out some more delicious recipes soon.

Here's the recipe, in case you want to give it a try. Le me know how you get on!

Ingredients

Melted butter, for greasing
2 oranges
3 eggs
215g (7 ½oz) caster sugar
300g (101/2 oz) ground almonds
1 tsp baking powder

For the icing:

250g (9oz) cream cheese
300g (10½ oz) icing sugar
3 large passion fruit (pulp only)
50-125g (2-41/2 oz) unsalted butter, softened
Edible flowers for decoration (optional)

Method

Preheat the oven to 170C (325F), gas mark 3

Lightly grease a 22cm (8 ½ inch) spring form tin with melted butter and line the base with greaseproof paper

Place the oranges in a small saucepan and cover with water. Bring to the boil over a medium heat. Cook for 15 minutes or until tender. Drain the oranges and return to the pan. Cover with cold water andbring to the boil again. Simmer for 15 minutes and drain.

Coarsely chop the oranges, and remove and discard any seeds. Place the orange chunks in a food processor and process until smooth

Whisk the eggs and sugar with an electric mixer until thick and pale. Gently fold in the orange puree, ground almonds and baking powder until just combined

Pour into a prepared and lined tin and bake for one hour or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean

Leave in the tin for 20 minutes then turn out on to a wire rack to cool completely

To make the icing, blend the cream cheese with the icing sugar and passion fruit pulp. If you want a smoother, richer icing you can add some unsalted butter. Smooth over the cake once cooled and decorate with the flowers, if using.