Sorry, I am not quite ready to wish you a Happy Easter yet!

It’s Good Friday today and I’m in London. Therefore this post was meant to be about Hot Cross Buns, spiced sweet buns that the English eat on Good Friday.

As I type the yeasty dough for them is – hopefully – rising next to me in the sun and the buns – assuming they turn out well – will still be eaten today. But I have not had a chance to do a trial bake and so can’t post a receipe or photo just yet.  However, if it works out well, you will hear from me again tomorrow and then you can also still make them for Easter; Easter Sunday. Not the right Easter day correct but, hey, we can just call them ‘Hot Easter Buns’ if need be 🙂

For now, I am presenting you an easy receipe for a cake that would be a great addition to any Easter Brunch table (a more German tradition) on any day over this Easter weekend. It’s a great little orange and almond cake, that’s not too sweet or heavy but moist and juicy!

Just note, that you may want to use organic or unsprayed/unwaxed oranges for this cake, as you need to use the whole orange, peel and all.

For a 18cm round cake you’ll need:

• 1 – 2 small sweet oranges (one for the cake but if you want to decorate the cake with orange peel, like I did,  you will need one more)
• 50 g butter, plus extra for the cake tin
• 140g sugar
• 3 eggs
• 85g self-raising flour
• 100g ground almonds
• icing sugar, to dust the cake

Put one orange in a small pot and cover with cold water. Bring to the boil, then cover with a lid and simmer for an hour. A lovely smell of orange may spread through your flat…

Remove the now squidgy orange with a slotted spoon and leave it to cool on a chopping board. Once it is cold enough to handle, chop it in to pieces and discard the pips.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius and butter and line the base of a round cake tin.
Tip the chopped up orange, in a food processor or blender and whizz until smooth.
Melt the 50g of butter and set aside.

In a bowl whisk together the eggs and sugar with an electric whisk until light and fluffy, for at least 3 minutes. Gently fold in the flour and ground almonds – I like to use a big spoon for this, gently going through the mixture and turning it over and over until the flour starts to become mixed in.

Add the orange puree and melted butter and fold them under, just as gently. Pour the mixture into your cake tin and bake for about 40 minutes until the cake is brown, springy and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Cool on a wire rack and just before serving, dust with a generous amount of icing sugar and fresh orange peel (using a cocktail maker tool to get thin strips if this is the look you are after).