January Joy #3 – Try a new recipe

I’m taking part in January Joy, a blogging challenge started by Rebecca from Florence Finds. It’s easy to take part, just write blog posts on as many/few of the prompts that take your fancy!

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It’s not a hard task for me to try a new recipe, especially with my 2015 Cooking the Books Challenge. Actually the weekend just past saw me try three new recipes; Slow cooked beef ragu, roasted butternut squash risotto and the recipe I’ll share today from BBC Good Food – a gluten free orange and almond cake.

Instead of using flours, this cake uses ground almonds and polenta, along with 7 whole eggs and 2 egg yolks. It is quite calorific (as I’ve only just found out – surely an 1/8th can’t have over 800 calories?!) but I find that you can get 10-12 good slices out of a cake 23in in diameter. Texture-wise,  there’s a bit of grainy crunchiness in there that you wouldn’t get in a sponge cake, but I found this a nice change from a flour based cake. Boiling the oranges properly is a key step so that the puree is nice and smooth.