Majorcan Almond Cake

(from Rick Stein’s Mediterranean Escapes)

Ingredients:

• 200 g ground almonds
• 5 large eggs, separated
• 200 g caster sugar
• Finely grated zest of ½ lemon
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• Butter to grease cake tin
• Icing sugar to dust (optional)

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 170˚C/gas mark 3

Grease a 23 cm round cake tin with butter and dust it out with flour.

Using an electric whisk, beat the egg yolks and sugar together in a bowl for 4 – 5 minutes until pale and creamy. Fold in the almonds, lemon zest and cinnamon. The mixture will be quite stiff at this point.

Clean the beaters of the whisk, and then use to beat the egg whites in a large clean bowl until they form soft peaks. Add 2 large spoonfuls of the egg whites to the mixture to loosen it slightly, and then gently fold in the remainder. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 40 minutes until a skewer pushed into the middle of the cake comes out clean.

Leave the cake to cool in the tin, then turn out and dust with icing sugar if you wish.

[The original recipe says to use blanched almonds and grind to a fine powder in a food processor, but we just used ground almonds.]