Orange sephardic cake

This cake traditionally takes quite a while to make because the oranges have to be boiled until soft, so the benefit of using the pressure cooker is they cook in a fraction of the time.

Credit: Andrew Hayes-Watkins

• serves

  8

• prep

  20 minutes

• cook

  50 minutes

• difficulty

  Easy

Ingredients

• 1 orange
• 3 eggs
• 110 g caster (superfine) sugar
• 125 g almond meal
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp orange blossom water (optional)
• butter, for greasing
• sea salt

To serve

• caster (superfine) sugar
• 2 tbsp toasted almonds
• strips of orange zest
• whipped cream

Instructions

1. First, put the orange in your pressure cooker and add 500 ml water. Close the lid and bring up to high pressure. Cook for 10 minutes and then remove from the heat. Leave to drop pressure naturally. When the orange is cool enough to handle, break up and remove any pips, then put into a food processor and blitz until quite smooth. Leave to cool.
2. Break the eggs into a bowl and whisk until well broken up and frothy. Beat in the sugar, followed by the almonds, baking powder, a generous pinch of salt and the orange blossom water, if using. Finally, stir in the puréed orange.
3. Take an 18-cm round cake tin and grease it. Pour in the cake batter. Cover the tin with baking paper or foil, and seal with string or a large elastic band. Put 5 cm just-boiled water in the base of your pressure cooker and add the trivet. Place the cake tin on the trivet. Loosely cover with the lid and allow to steam for 15 minutes without pressure, then bring up to high pressure and cook for 20 minutes at high pressure. Allow to drop pressure naturally for at least 5 minutes. Check for doneness – a skewer inserted in the centre should come out fairly clean, with perhaps the odd dry crumb clinging to it.
4. Leave to cool in the tin for 15 minutes, then turn out on to a cooling rack. Dust with the sugar, toasted almonds and orange zest and serve with whipped cream.

 

Recipe and image from Modern Pressure Cooking by Catherine Phipps, published by Quadrille, RRP $50

Cook's Notes

Oven temperatures are for conventional; if using fan-forced (convection), reduce the temperature by 20˚C. | We use Australian tablespoons and cups: 1 teaspoon equals 5 ml; 1 tablespoon equals 20 ml; 1 cup equals 250 ml. | All herbs are fresh (unless specified) and cups are lightly packed. | All vegetables are medium size and peeled, unless specified. | All eggs are 55-60 g, unless specified.