almond cake with lemon and poppy seeds

servings
8

method

A great family treat for the Easter weekend!

Preheat your oven to 180ºC/350ºF/gas 4. Rub a 20cm cake tin with butter. Whizz the butter and sugar in a food processor until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks, one at a time, while the motor is running, then the lemon zest and juice.

When the mixture is nice and smooth, pulse in the flour and almonds and finally the milk. Don't mix it too much – just enough to combine. Spoon the mixture into a bowl, stir in the poppy seeds and put to one side.

In a very clean bowl, whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks. Beat in the remaining 1 tablespoon of sugar until smooth. Stir a spoonful of egg white into the almond mixture. Add the rest of the egg white and fold together carefully – you don't want to beat the bubbles out of the egg white.

Spoon into the prepared cake tin and smooth the mix out evenly with the back of a spoon. Place on the middle shelf of your preheated oven and bake for about 45 minutes until cooked through, risen and golden brown.

When cool, sift the icing sugar and mixed spice over the top of the cake and serve with dollops of crème fraîche.

Tip: The butter needs to be very soft, so take it out of the fridge in advance.

ingredients

• 120g softened butter, plus a little extra for greasing
• 120g caster sugar, plus 1 tablespoon extra
• 4 large eggs, preferably free-range or organic, separated
• zest and juice of 2 lemons
• 60g self-raising flour, sifted
• 120g ground almonds
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 75g poppy seeds
• 50g icing sugar
• 1 teaspoon mixed spice
• crème fraîche, to serve

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tried this recipe or a similar one? share your tips...

1. by Helen on Fri 17 Feb 2012 @ 19:27

The texture is dense and a bit on the sweet side. Might improve with less ground almond

2. by Alli Rundle on Mon 13 Feb 2012 @ 12:28

We made this for sunday lunch yesterday and it was delicious. I do however think that it would be a good idea to make a simple lemon syrup to pour over the cake as it comes out of the oven.

3. by Katja on Thu 29 Sep 2011 @ 09:28

Lyn, you can use rice flour instead. If you want the cake to be perfect, just add some baking soda (not powder!), but if you don't have any available, simply make more dough or use a smaller tin and you'll be fine as well.

4. by Heather on Thu 14 Apr 2011 @ 15:55

Mixed spice is just baking spices - cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger etc. Like pumpkin pie spice apparently http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_spice Instead of flour, make it totally with almonds, that might work - especially as the egg whites are beaten for fluffiness this may mean the cake can deal with the extra almond. Worse case it might be slightly denser but gorgeously almondy so what the hey!

5. by Maria on Wed 06 Apr 2011 @ 21:57

Help!!! I live in Nashville, TN and I'm lost when it comes to these units of measure! And WHAT is mixed spice and creme frache? I'd love to make this recipe for Easter. Can anyone help me???

6. by Lyn on Sun 27 Mar 2011 @ 18:16

Lovely recipe - my husband has to eat non gluten foods - what kind of flour can we use instead of the 60gm self raising flour??? Can you supply more baking recipes with gluten free flour??? Many thanks.

7. by Eirini Dimitriou on Thu 24 Mar 2011 @ 11:11

Perfect cake with nice balanced lemon almond! I used just 40gr poppy seeds. Thanks! What kind of mixed spice do you mean?

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