The tea is ‘Blood Orange’ by Red Seal – appropriate, right? And the cake is my VERY EASY homemade, gluten free orange cake:

This pandemic has highlighted the need to ‘make do’ and not waste anything, so when I found myself with more navel oranges than we could eat [I made the mistake of buying a 3kg bag], the Offspring said, “Why don’t you make an orange cake. We haven’t had one of those in years.”
Seemed like a good idea until I dug out the recipe and stared at the bit that said ‘take nine eggs….’ Nine eggs? If I’d been smart, I would have made a half quantity, but you know how it is.
Anyway, apart from needing a lots of eggs and almond meal, the recipe is so ridiculously easy I decided to share. Enjoy. 🙂
Home Made Orange Cake
Ingredients for cake
- 3 oranges
- 9 eggs
- 350gm of caster sugar
- 350gm of almond meal
Ingredients for Orange Syrup
- 2/3 cup water
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 1 orange – zested, peeled and segmented
How to make the cake:
- Preheat the oven to fan forced 180 C
- Grease and line a 20 cm square cake pan with grease proof [parchment] paper. As I don’t have a pan of the right size I used a fairly large rectangular baking dish instead. The cake won’t rise a lot but it will rise a little so just make sure there’s a bit of room at the top.
- Place 3 oranges in a saucepan, cover with water, cover with a lid and bring to the boil.
- Reduce heat and simmer for about 15 minutes until the oranges are soft.
- Discard the water and allow the oranges to cool.
- If you have a food processor, blend the oranges [skins and all!] until they form a coarse ‘paste’. It’s actually more like a thick porridge. Set aside.
- Cream the eggs and sugar until light an fluffy. I have an electric beater so I’m not sure if it’s possible to beat the egg mixture using a hand one. Good luck?
- Add the almond meal and the orange paste and stir until well mixed.
- Pour the batter into the prepared pan [see 2 above] and place in the middle of the pre-heated oven [see 1 above] for approximately 45 minutes.
How to make the orange syrup
- Combine the sugar and water in a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Simmer for about 5 minutes. Mine was more like about 10 minutes but it didn’t seem to matter. Just make sure you don’t end up with toffee instead of sugar syrup!
- Take the syrup off the heat and set aside.
- Pour a little boiling water over the orange zest [the zest is the orange part – make sure it doesn’t have any of the white pith as this can be bitter]. Let it sit for 30 seconds. Drain and rinse under cold water. The recipe says to repeat this step but I didn’t and the syrup was fine. Your choice.
- Place the zest and orange segments into the syrup and allow to cool. Ahem, I forgot about the segments so I only put the zest into the syrup. Seemed fine. 🙂
The recipe says to serve the cake with a drizzle of the syrup and some orange segments. Silly me, I left the cake in the pan and just poured the syrup over the whole cake. Worked fine except the cake now sticks to the parchment paper. -sigh-
Next time I’ll take the cake out of the pan, remove the paper, put the cake back into the pan and then pour the syrup over. Live and learn. 🙂
And for those who don’t know how to segment an orange so there’s none of the white pitch, here’s my method:
- Cut a thin-ish slice off the top and bottom of the orange so you have a flat surface to work with:

2. Hold the knife at an angle [as shown above] and slice off a section of the peel, making sure to take off the white pith as well.
3. Once you’ve cut all around the top half of the orange, flip it over and do the same with the bottom half:

4. Once all the peel is off, do NOT cut the orange in half. You’re likely to get some of the pith in the middle, and you don’t want that. Instead, slice off one of the ‘cheeks’ of the orange by cutting about 1/3 of an inch off centre:

Now you can cut the cheek into segments. Repeat for the other side and the two narrow portions on each side. Ta dah, you have a segmented orange!
Some people may have noticed that I haven’t included any pretty porcelain with this post. I did think about it, but didn’t feel like washing up by hand so…dishwasher proof dishes only today. 😀
Enjoy,
Meeks
June 28th, 2021 at 3:26 pm
That looks so delicious! ❤
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June 29th, 2021 at 8:43 am
Hi Cherie. 🙂 It was, just a bit too much of it. I would definitely recommend making half quantities unless you have a big family. 🙂
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June 29th, 2021 at 9:22 am
I completely understand. Thank you.
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June 29th, 2021 at 9:52 pm
🙂
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June 27th, 2021 at 4:01 am
Hi Meeks, thanks for sharing your recipe. I love orange cake and also have a nice recipe. Almond flour is not something I use that often but it is nice to have a gluten free recipe.
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June 27th, 2021 at 11:11 pm
I’m the same, Robbie. I use the almond meal in just two cakes but it’s worth having. 🙂
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June 26th, 2021 at 4:26 pm
[…] which is the first book of Innerscape and thoroughly enjoyed it…Meeka posted a recipe for an orange cake similar to one I have cooked …mine was a tad smaller… with fewer eggs…but […]
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June 26th, 2021 at 1:36 am
Nine eggs! It must be wonderful though. And since it’s made with almond meal, I can actually eat this! Yum. I’m going to make this when I get home. My husband is sitting next to me, nodding his head. Lol. Thanks for the recipe!
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June 26th, 2021 at 10:07 am
-giggles- you’re welcome! Bon appetit, both of you. 🙂
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June 25th, 2021 at 6:03 am
Looks delicious. But so many eggs! A winter quandary… trees laden with oranges but chooks are off the lay so eggs are like gold.
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June 25th, 2021 at 10:35 am
Ouch. A quandary indeed. I was very lucky as my neighbour gave me some eggs. I wonder if this could be a ‘community cake’? Seriously, you get a hell of a lot for those 9 eggs.
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June 24th, 2021 at 9:36 pm
The cake looks very, very tempting! Similar to some of the cakes I’ve eaten in my travels to Italy. I must remember to try it this winter. It’s summer in my part of the world and NYC is not suitable for baking—except on the roof where you can bake yourself in the sun.
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June 24th, 2021 at 10:44 pm
lmao – or an egg. 🙂 Definitely winter fare. Just…make half quantities. We have so much…-rolls eyes-
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June 24th, 2021 at 4:28 pm
I made one of these a few months ago it was very nice made in a smaller tin(fewer eggs) Lovely cake… 😀 X
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June 24th, 2021 at 6:05 pm
lol – that’s what I should have done as well! We’ll have dessert for days. 😀
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June 24th, 2021 at 6:06 pm
Haha…. It is a lovely cake though first time I have cooked whole oranges and blitzed them but lovely tasting cake x
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June 24th, 2021 at 6:08 pm
lol – I know! The first time I made it I was…what the????? Would love to know who invented it, and how on earth they thought of it.
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June 24th, 2021 at 3:42 pm
I’ve never tasted orange cake! Sounds so delicious! ❤
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June 24th, 2021 at 6:06 pm
Oh! Please give it a try. It’s soft and moist and sweet and a tiny tiny bit bitter for ‘tang’. Kind of like a cross between a cake and a pudding?
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