Easy Almond Cake Recipe
- 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons softened unsalted butter
- 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons softened marzipan
- ½ cup sugar
- ¼ teaspoon almond extract
- ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 6 large eggs
- 1 cup self-rising cake flour
- 10-inch springform tube pan or patterned ring mold, buttered and floured
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Chop the butter and marzipan to make them easier to break down, and put them in the bowl of the food processor, fitted with the metal blade, with the sugar. Process until combined and pretty well smooth. Add almond and vanilla extracts, process again, then break the eggs one at a time through the funnel, processing again each time. Mix the flour and tip down the funnel, processing yet again, and then pour the mixture into the prepared pan, scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula.
- Bake for 50 minutes, but check from 40. Then, when the cake looks golden and cooked and a cake tester or fine skewer (or a piece of spaghetti) comes out cleanish, remove from the oven and leave to cool in the pan before turning out. (This is when you will be feeling grateful if it’s the springform you’re using.)
- The fact that you could easily get 12 slices out of this cake is another reason why it comes in useful when you’ve got people coming for dinner. That it keeps for a good week is another point in its favor; you don’t have to be fiddling around with all the courses just before liftoff. And if you don’t want to eat raspberries with it, like the rosemary cake it’s very good with apples. With this cake, I make a glorious pink apple purée. Either go for apples stewed in blood-orange juice (wonderful around February when the oranges are in), which gives a tenderly coral tint, adding a cinnamon stick or ½-1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon, or use red-skinned eating apples and don’t peel before cooking them. In fact, there’s no need to core them either, just chop the apples roughly and put them in a pan with some butter, lemon juice, cinnamon or cloves and, if there’s some around, a slug of Calvados. Strain the apples when they’re cooked to an utterly yielding pulp, or push them through a food mill. If you want to smarten up the cake-plus-purée deal, then provide a bowl of crème fraîche (with or without Calvados and a little confectioners’ sugar stirred in) with some toasted slivered almonds on top.
- I am not someone who enjoys peeling and pithing oranges at great length, but sliced blood or ordinary oranges, with a syrup made by reducing equal volumes of juice and sugar to an almost-caramel, would partner an orange-zested version of this almond ring (the zest in place of vanilla) exquisitely.
