Something sweet: Hazelnut and blood orange cake
Several weeks ago, while roaming around the grocery store without a shopping list, I spontaneously bought a sizeable bag of blood oranges. I’m not quite sure why I decided to buy so many at once, given that I’d never even tasted a blood orange before, but as I hefted the bag onto my kitchen counter I chalked the slightly irrational purchase up to the perils of entering the grocery store without a specific, detailed list in hand. Enter with nothing; exit with an oversized bag of exotic oranges, a block of white chocolate, and enough assorted vegetables to pull together some kind of half-hearted attempt at dinner that night.
The oranges sat on my counter for a few days before I decided to put some of them to use in a cake. Last year I had baked a cake in which the batter was made up almost entirely of ground nuts and whole oranges, and I assumed the blood oranges would be an appropriate substitute here. The resulting cake, unfortunately, was something of a let-down. I had tried to over-compensate for the sharp tang of the blood oranges by upping the amount of sugar in the cake – and the cake somehow ended up being simultaneously sickeningly sweet and bitingly bitter, with a rather unpleasant gooey texture. Needless to say, this is not the cake that I had been envisioning.
But as much as the cake was an undeniable failure, it also got me thinking about how I could make a blood orange cake that actually tasted appealing. Because there was something addictive about those oranges – deceptively normal-looking on the outside and then brilliantly, unexpectedly red inside with an unusual flavour intensity to match – and I was sure that eventually I’d hit on the perfect cake recipe to compliment them.
Last weekend, as I was flipping through David Tanis’s wonderfully inspiring A Platter of Figs while hunting for dinner ideas, I came across his recipe for hazelnut sponge cake. Like the original recipe I attempted, this one was also based on ground nuts and included a citrus component (lemons, in this case), but with only a quarter cup of sugar in total and a batter made almost entirely from eggs, it promised to be neither excessively sweet nor unappealingly gooey. I rushed to the grocery store, shopping list firmly in hand this time, and bought a few more blood oranges and a giant bag of hazelnuts.
The cake came together quickly and easily; other than swapping the lemon out for a blood orange, I decided to use dark brown demerara sugar instead of regular white sugar (the heavy, molasses-like flavour of demerara would be a pleasant compliment to the brightness of the citrus) and threw in some vanilla extract on a whim (I’m a firm believer in the ability of vanilla to enhance almost every dessert recipe in existence). And since the cake itself – with only the juice and zest of one orange – wouldn’t have an overpowering citrus flavour, I decided to slice up several blood oranges into thick rounds and arrange them over the top of the cake. The end result was exactly what I was hoping for: The cake is nutty and rich but surprisingly light thanks to all those egg whites, and it’s laced with a delicately sweet orange flavour. The orange slices on top of the cake add a hit of pure, bold flavour with every bite – intense, but not at all overwhelming. With a cup of black tea and a spoonful of lightly whipped, vanilla-spiked cream, this cake was the perfect mid-afternoon snack I had been hoping for.
Ingredients
- 1 pound hazelnuts
- 8 large eggs, separated
- 1/4 cup packed demerara sugar
- Grated zest and juice of one blood orange
- 2 tablespoons cake flour
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 3 blood oranges, peeled and sliced
Preparation
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9-inch springform pan with parchment paper.
- Spread the hazelnuts in a single layer on a baking sheet, then roast for about 10 minutes (the skins should be starting to blister). To remove the skins, put the nuts into a dry tea towel and rub. Once the hazelnuts have cooled, use a food processor to coarsely grind them.
- In a mixing bowl, combine the egg yolks, sugar, orange juice, and vanilla, whisking until creamy. Then add the hazelnuts, cake flour, salt, and orange zest.
- In another large mixing bowl, whip the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Stir about one third of the egg whites into the batter to lighten it, then add all of the batter into the bowl with the egg whites and gently fold until just combined. It’s important not to mix too vigorously here – the egg whites need to have enough air to give the cake its volume.
- Use a spatula to scrape the batter into the cake pan. Bake for 15 minutes, then lower the temperature to 325 degrees and bake for another 20 to 30 minutes, until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Let the cake cool completely on a rack before removing the sides of the springform pan. Once the cake has cooled, arrange the blood orange slices over the top.
(Adapted from the recipe for hazelnut sponge cake in David Tanis’s A Platter of Figs)
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