This cake was a blagging special; I had some tangerines left that needed using and Nigella Lawson had shared a tangerine cake which looked delicious on her Instagram account. Her recipe however used a lot of eggs and I wanted to try and aim for a vegan and gluten free version, if possible. I used the juice from a can of chickpeas (aquafaba) - which is honestly magical stuff - and instead of plain or self-raising I used almond flour which gives it a nutty taste too. All in all a winged recipe is sometimes the best, and if I ever write a cookbook this will be celebrated as a masterpiece – and complete fluke!! Hope you enjoy it as much as we did, and if you do give it a try please do let me know as I would love to know what you think and if you tried to add/take anything away from it too!
Notes: If I was to make this again I would add a little plain flour too just to give it a bit more structure
Ingredients
3 tangerines, or another fruit from the orange family (would also work with lemons)
1 tin of chickpeas (drain for the juice – aquafaba) use the chickpeas for something else
225g caster sugar
100g butter
225g Almond Flour
1tsp Vanilla
2tsp Baking powder
Method
1, Preheat oven to 160 degrees (deviating from the standard 180!!)
2, Boil a pan of water and add in the tangerines, cooking them covered for 20 minutes. Once cooked remove from the pan and allow to cool
3, While the oranges are cooling, start whisking the aquafaba which acts as egg whites and will turn fluffy and white after a lot of mixing (I whisked for about 10 minutes with an electric whisk until white and fluffy) then add in half of the sugar, whisking again for another 5 minutes
4, In a separate bowl add the butter and the rest of the sugar and whisk together until pale and fluffy, about 10 minutes (there is a lot of whisking)
5, Cut and remove seeds from the tangerines and add to a blender and blitz until you have a paste; add this to the butter and sugar mix before adding in the aquafaba and folding through as gently as possible to try and keep some air
6, Add the almond flour and baking powder and fold through until just combined
7, Add to a prepared cake tin (greased and lined) and bake uncovered for 40 minutes before covering with foil for a further 20 minutes, until cooked
8, Mine was more of a pudding texture than a cake, like an orange gooey blondie, which I appreciated but you could cook it for a little longer
9, To make the icing I mixed the juice of a tangerine and a lemon with icing sugar until it reached the right consistency then drizzled it on top with a grating of tangerine zest
10, Enjoy!!!