Almond Cake
With only one alteration, from Alice Medrich’s Pure Dessert, a book I strongly encourage you to buy immediately.
Preparation time: roughly one hour
Yield: one 8-inch/20 cm cake
Note: You will need an 8-inch/20 cm cake pan and a food processor, handheld mixer, or mini-processor to bake this cake. See notes for discussion of ways to bake this cake if you lack kitchen equipment.
If possible, weigh your ingredients.
4 ounces/116 grams whole almonds, blanched or not
1 cup plus two tablespoons/300 grams sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs, at room temperature
8 tablespoons (1 American stick) sweet butter, at room temperature, sliced into 4-5 pieces
1 generous tablespoon Amaretto (see notes, below)
1.5 ounces/45 grams AP Flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
Optional:
Powdered sugar (caster) for the top
Place oven rack in lower third of oven. Preheat the oven to 350F/180C.
Butter the sides of an 8-inch/20-cm round cake pan. Cover pan bottom with parchment paper.
Put almonds, sugar, and salt in food processor work bowl. Pulse until almonds are pulverized. Add eggs, butter, and Amaretto, if using. Pulse to blend.
At this juncture, either continue using your processor or, if your machine is struggling, pour the batter into a large mixing bowl.
Add flour and baking powder and either process until just blended or add ingredients to the large bowl and using a spatula, mix by hand until just blended.
Pour batter into cake pan and place in oven.
Bake almond cake 35-40 minutes, until a tester comes out clean. If cake begins to brown too much on top, cover lightly with tinfoil.
Cool the cake completely on rack before transferring to a plate. Ms. Medrich recommends allowing the cake to ripen a day before cutting into it.
Serve almond cake with fresh berries, stone fruit, or by itself. As noted in the post, the almond cake pairs well with sweet dessert wines, sherry, or, more traditionally, tea or coffee.
Almond cake keeps well at room temperature for about five days, should it last that long. The cake freezes, well-wrapped, up to three months.
Notes:
Almond cake is based on freshly ground almonds, ground in a full-sized food processor. Lacking a processor, you can grind whole almonds in a nut grinder, a coffee grinder or mini-food processor. Less ideally, almond cake may be baked using purchased ground almonds or almond flour. If you choose the latter options, make sure your ingredients are fresh. Nut oils are highly perishable. Trust your nose: rancid nut products will smell off.
If you do own a food processor but it’s an underpowered model, you can still make this cake. Here’s how:
–Grind the almonds in the food processor. Finish the recipe using a traditional or handheld mixer
–Just before adding flour, pour the batter into a large mixing bowl. Add the flour and mix by hand.
Note that discussing the above takes longer than assembling the cake.
The original recipe calls for 1/4 teaspoon almond extract, added with the almonds, sugar, and salt. An optional tablespoon of Kirsch is suggested, which is added to the batter with the eggs. I substituted the Amaretto for both ingredients successfully. Either way, you can’t go wrong.
The original recipe calls for blanched or unblanched almonds. I didn’t bother to blanch mine.
To blanch almonds, heat water either in the microwave or atop the stove. Drop the almonds in for thirty seconds. Drain in colander and run cool water over them. Repeat. Dry in clean, non-linting towel. The skins should come off easily.