26 Nov Honey and almond yoghurt cake with orange icing (no sugar)

I told you about the cake I baked for my boyfriend’s and his mum’s birthday, which ended up having a big hole in the middle… so the problem was that I had so little time on that day that I tried to do everything too quickly, including taking the cake out of it’s mould. The heavier, still wet bit in the middle therefore stayed put. Sad times. Alas, today I made the cake again. Actually, I made it yesterday, and learning from the my previous mistake, I left it to cool overnight, then today I finished it off with the icing and the eating, while musing happily over the deeper life lesson learnt here. Which is “don’t rush”, if you’re interested. Simple.

You can probably detect the Middle-Eastern influence in this recipe – I replaced sugar with local honey, as they sometimes do in baklava, and the yoghurt is a little trick that my Greek friend Karina taught me, to keep the cake moist. The addition of ground almonds and orange blossom water completes the picture. A flying (or at least hovering) carpet to eat it on would be the ideal cherry-on-top, but clearly we’re not quite there yet in terms of technology (seriously?)

Ingredients

Cake
250g unsalted butter
100g ground almonds
200g plain flour
150g good quality honey
2 eggs
1 tablespoon orange blossom water
150g greek yoghurt

Icing
250g cream cheese
100g icing sugar
2 tablespoons fresh orange juice
1 tablespoon orange blossom water

I used my special method of cake-making whereby I melted the butter in a pan first, then added the honey and then the ground almonds. Once everything was gloopy, I turned the heat off and started to sift the flour in. Then an egg, then more flour, another egg, more flour… mixing all the time. Finally, I added the orange blossom water and honey and poured the whole lot into a greased baking tray and popped it into a pre-heated over for about 30min, 180 degrees C.

Note: This cake tastes great refridgerated