Sephardic Almond Cake

JLF, or Jaipur Literature Festival has now been an agenda on my winter horizon for the past 6 years. Every year, with some of my dearest friends, I spend 3-4 days soaking in panel discussions about eclectic topics, readings from books I haven't heard of before and interviews with new authors to be discovered. For the most part, we have stayed focussed on the festival itself, with a rare break for coffee or a shopping and lassi run during a one hour lunch break.

But a couple of years ago, it began pouring on day 2 of the fest. One of the trio was stuck on a flight that got directed from Mumbai to Delhi, Ahmedabad and then Jaipur due to the downpour, thus postponing her arrival time to sometime that evening. The other two - my soulsister M and I - rattled around the environs of the sodden Diggi Palace for a dispirited hour or so before we decided to make tracks.

We had heard about some interesting stores around Jaipur including Dhora, so we decided to head there. Anokhi Cafe happened to be a hop, skip and jump away so we landed up there for lunch. Unfortunately, so had half the litfest crowd, so we had a pretty long wait before we could finally sit and order. We opted for the salads with blue cheese and other fixings, which were absolutely marvellous - the rocket and lettuce about the freshest I have ever seen. And then we opted, rarely for us, for dessert. The Sephardic Cake sounded interesting and we decided to try it. Love at first bite!!! It was simply the most moist and flavourful cake we had ever tasted, with a fragrant citrusy tang to it.

Ever since, I have wanted to recreate it myself, and this year, for New Year's Eve, I finally did. It was magnificent - truly a worthy cake to bring in a new year, with enough comfort and exotica to be the perfect mix. And most of all, given my predilections, easy to make!!! Try it, you won't regret it.

Ingredients
2 oranges
200 grams almond meal
200 grams sugar
6 eggs
1 tsp baking powder

Method
Boil the whole oranges for 1.5 hours or until they are soft - peel and all. Cut, deseed and puree the whole thing - peel and all!
Beat the eggs until fluffy. Beat in the almond meal, sugar and baking powder. If you like, add a splash of vanilla and some saffron.
Bake in a preheated oven in a lined or floured 9 inch tin at 190 degrees for an hour or until the inserted knife comes out clean.

Sprinkle icing sugar on top if you really want to decorate this masterpiece of simplicity, or curls of orange peel. But frankly it doesn't need any gussying up. Serve warm, with a side of mascarpone or cream if needed.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Violence against women awareness month

Image
As part of this initiative, I want to speak about the story of someone I used to be close to. I grew up with her, thought she was the coolest ever. She was always wonderful to my sister and I and we loved to hang out together every summer. When she got married, I was 18 and I thought she was one of the most beautiful brides I had ever seen. She went off to the US of A with her Prince Charming, the kannadiga version of the fairy tale, off to her fairy tale life, or so I thought. Her mother-in-law had some problems with the fairy tale, it turned out. Having lost her husband at a young age, she bitterly resented her daughter-in-law's 'happy married life'. Every time she went out to visit them, she managed to inject a dose of venom into their married life. The one time I visited while the mother-in-law was also staying with them I saw some amazingly bitter fights between the MIl and DIL, instigated by the MIL over imagined slights and'misdemeanors' by the DIL who was to
Read more

Winter in Delhi

One of the reasons that I love living in Delhi - all right, NCR - despite all its many shortcomings and hassles is the glorious change of seasons. I am a person who likes and revels in change - if things stay the same for too long, I get restless. I'd hate to live in a place where the weather is the same, so you don't know if you're in March or May. Delhi with its four definite seasons and a different mood for every month just suits me. In the winter, Delhi is a different city to the dun-coloured, dust-ridden one it is in the summer. You wake up to an intensely cold morning, and despite having gotten a good nine hours of sleep, it feels like you just went to bed. You burrow into your many layers of thick razais some more, wanting to snatch yet another twenty winks. It's gray outside and so foggy you can barely see the ship building which in summer is like the lighthouse marker to your home. You can see the fluffy angora fog sitting on its haunches on your terrace as you
Read more

Is marriage still an institution?

Image
Over the last few years, even back here in India which one would consider more conservative than the West in the area of marriage, one hears so many stories about marriages breaking up, people having affairs, people leaving their spouses after 12 or 20 years of marriage...Everyone I know knows at least 5 marriages in trouble, and it's something that's distressing and scary for all of us married people. Most of us think we're in happy marriages and yet you never know what's around the corner. A friend of mine made a highly percipient remark some time back. She said, "I always thought my marriage was special. But suddenly I have realised that it isn't, that it is the same as any other marriage." It's true. Most of us who consider ourselves happily married think that we have something special, that we know a secret other couples don't know. And it's a highly dangerous misconception to labour under. I was thinking back about the time when marriage
Read more