Flourless orange and almond cake, done the honest way

The oranges I used for this came from the fruit stall on the corner of King Street in Newtown, the one that always has a crate of slightly bruised navels going cheap on a Tuesday. Bruised is fine here. Actually bruised is better, because this whole cake starts with boiling the fruit until it collapses, skin and all, into something you’d never guess was still an orange.

This is my version of a cake that shows up on every healthy-eating list going, the flourless orange and almond cake, but the ones I’d tried before this recipe were either dense as a house brick or so sweet they gave me a headache before 10am. I wanted something lighter in sweetness but still properly moist, the kind of cake you’d cut a second slice of without really deciding to.

Why the whole orange method actually works

Most orange cakes ask you to zest and juice, which throws away the pith and membrane, the very bits holding a lot of the fruit’s fibre and bitterness. Boiling the oranges whole for close to an hour softens all of that down and mellows the bitterness right out, so when you blend the lot, skin included, you get this thick, fragrant pulp that carries real orange flavour through the whole crumb, not just a hint of zest on top. It’s the same principle behind why I love making Summer Cleansing Juice with the pith left on for texture, just taken further.

The almond meal does the heavy lifting instead of flour, giving you that slightly sandy, moist crumb that stays good for days rather than drying out the way a wheat-based sponge does by day two. And because we’re using rice malt syrup instead of caster sugar, the sweetness sits lower and rounder, closer to the orange itself than to a straight sugar hit.

Ingredients

• 2 large oranges, whole (about 400g total, unpeeled, scrubbed)
• 6 free-range eggs
• 150g rice malt syrup (or raw honey if you prefer a deeper flavour)
• 250g almond meal
• 1 teaspoon gluten-free baking powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
• a good pinch of sea salt
• 2 tablespoons flaked almonds, for the top
• Greek yoghurt and extra orange segments, to serve

Method

1. Place the whole, unpeeled oranges in a saucepan, cover with cold water, and bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for about 1 hour, topping up water as needed, until the oranges are completely soft and a knife slides through with no resistance.
2. Drain and set aside to cool until you can handle them, then cut in half, remove any obvious pips, and blend the whole lot, skin and flesh, to a smooth thick pulp. You should end up with roughly 350-400g of pulp.
3. Preheat your oven to 170°C (fan-forced 155°C). Grease and line the base of a 22cm springform tin.
4. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs and rice malt syrup together until pale and slightly thickened, about 2 minutes with electric beaters.
5. Fold through the orange pulp, then the almond meal, baking powder, cardamom and salt, mixing just until combined. Don’t overwork it.
6. Pour into the prepared tin, smooth the top, and scatter over the flaked almonds.
7. Bake for 55-65 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean and the top is a deep golden brown. If it’s colouring too fast at the 40-minute mark, loosely tent with foil.
8. Cool in the tin for 15 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely before slicing. It cuts far more cleanly once it’s fully cool, even though the smell coming off it warm is genuinely hard to resist.

Serves 10-12

What I love about this one

It’s the smell when it hits the pan on cooling, that deep, almost marmalade note from the pith, mixed with the toasty warmth of the almond meal. There’s something honest about a cake that doesn’t need icing to feel finished. A dollop of thick Greek yoghurt on the side and a few fresh segments is really all it wants, maybe a scrape of orange zest over the top if you’ve got a spare orange knocking about.

A serving idea worth trying

I’ve started serving this slightly warm with a spoonful of yoghurt and a drizzle of extra rice malt syrup when I’m having people over on a Sunday, alongside a pot of tea rather than coffee, which somehow suits the orange better. If you’re building out a lighter dessert table, it sits nicely next to something like the Macadamia and Strawberry Cheesecake, one baked and dense, one raw and creamy, so there’s contrast on the plate.

A variation, if you want one

Swap the cardamom for a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and add a handful of chopped pistachios into the batter along with the almond meal. It leans a bit more Middle Eastern in flavour, closer in spirit to the citrus and nut combinations in our Festive Quinoa Tabouleh, if you’re after a whole meal built around that flavour direction. Blood oranges work here too when they’re in season through winter, and the colour running through the crumb is honestly gorgeous, a soft dusty pink rather than the usual golden orange.

Where I’d manage expectations

I’ll be straight with you: the boiling stage takes the best part of an hour and it’s not a recipe you can rush if you’re after that mellow, bitterness-free result. If you’re genuinely short on time, you can get away with using the zest and juice of two oranges plus a spoonful of orange blossom water instead, and the cake will still taste good, just with a slightly flatter, less layered orange flavour. I’d only bother with the full whole-orange method on a weekend, not a Tuesday-night dessert emergency.

The nutrition side of it, briefly

Almonds bring a decent amount of fibre and unsaturated fat to the mix, and using rice malt syrup instead of refined sugar keeps the overall sweetness lower without pretending this is a health food, because it’s still a cake. If you want the fuller picture on why fibre-rich baking like this matters day to day, Why fibre matters more than most of us think covers it well, and Eat for Health‘s guidelines are a sensible reference point if you’re thinking about where treats like this sit across a week. The CSIRO has also published useful work on swapping refined sugars for lower-GI natural sweeteners in home baking, which is roughly the thinking behind this recipe.

I grow a scraggly little kaffir lime and a few chilli bushes on my balcony here in Sydney, nothing to do with this cake admittedly, but it’s the same instinct really, using the whole plant rather than just the bit you’d normally reach for. This cake keeps well in an airtight container in the fridge for four or five days, and if anything I think the flavour is better on day two once the orange has had a chance to settle right through the crumb.

— Mei Lin, Golden Door Living kitchen