Almond and Lemon Cake

"S'ils n'ont plus de pain, qu’ils mangent de la brioche." - Marie Antionette

"If they have no bread, let them eat cake!" This famous misquotation (What? You didn't know it was a misquotation? Read about it here.) by Marie Antionette is wonderful when you analyse it and realise that, really, all she was trying to do is do the peasants a favour and let them eat glorious cake. 

Speaking of, this IS a glorious cake. I found the recipe while blog-trawling the other day, promptly gave it a try and was very impressed with what came out of my oven. Its very simple, and is made using very traditional cake baking methods. I would encourage anyone to bake it; you can't really fuck it up unless you overbake it, which is unlikely to happen seeing that you, being such a keen food enthusiast, are here, reading this post. Or whatever. Just make the cake. You will be thanking me.

Ingredients

225g unsalted butter, at room temperature

225g castor sugar

4 free range eggs

125g plain flour*

100g almonds*

zest and juice of 2 lemons

1 tsp almond or lemon extract, if you can find it, or just use vanilla extract if you want

*The mixture of ground almonds and flour can be altered. If you can afford it, go for as much ground almonds as possible, just make sure that the total mixture makes up 225g. E.g. use 175g ground almonds and 50g flour, etc. DO NOT use less than 100g ground almonds. You can make ground almonds by processing whole almonds in a food processor if you can't find it at the shops. Try dry-roasting your almonds first, it'll probably give off a completely different, more complex, flavour.

• Preheat your oven to 180°C. Set up an oven rack on the lowest level. Grease a 24cm springform cake tin well with butter. You can line it as well if you want to.
• In a large, wide bowl, cream your butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. ("creaming" is a process whereby you beat butter and sugar together vigorously so that the sugar and butter become one pale and fluffy mixture).
• Add one egg to the creamed butter and flour mixture along with about 2tbsp of the flour. Mix it in well. Add another egg and another 2tbsp flour, mix in, and continue like this until all the eggs and flour are well mixed in.
• Carefully mix in the ground almonds, lemon zest and juice, and whatever flavoured extract you may be using. Don't worry if you think the mixture looks curdled when you add the lemon juice, it will be fine. And if it does look curdled, just mix well and it will turn out fine.
• Pour the mixture into the prepared tin, even it out, and place on the oven rack on the lowest shelf (this will make sure that the top of the cake does not burn as it bakes). Turn down the oven to 170 °C and bake for 20 minutes. 
• After 20 minutes, place the cake and oven rack onto the middle shelf (this will help the top to brown evenly in the final stage of baking). Bake for a further 5-10 minutes. Check regularly by inserting a toothpick into the middle of the cake. The cake is done when the toothpick comes out almost clean and the top of the cake is firm. TAKE CARE NOT TO OVERBAKE, as this will cause the cake to dry out and will ruin the whole point of this cake.
• Take the cake out of the oven when it is done and allow to cool on a wire rack for about 15 minutes in the tin. Unmould the cake and place it back on the wire rack to finish cooling. 

Try not to cut the cake before the cake has cooled properly. It WILL tempt you. Your willpower WILL be tested. It's that good. But, seriously, if you cut the cake before it is cool, it will not complete its baking process properly and it will end up crumbly. I would say allow at least 30 minutes cooling time.

If you want, sprinkle over some toasted almond slivers, and dust with icing sugar (if you're aiming for that super-duper professional look).

This cake is moist, rich, and really simple. You can taste the almonds and lemon beautifully, which epitomises the whole point of this being such a simple cake: you can taste what is in it!

dK

#  On a photographic note, notice the difference between the lighting of the picture above and the one below, and what it does to the overall colour of the picture. The one above was taken using a flash, and the one below without, with the same background lighting. Seeing as they are relatively similar pictures, I was interested by the differences in colour hue, amount of noise in the picture (the one below is far "noisier") and overall clarity and definition. #