Clementine is a variety of orange that’s sweet, seedless, easy to peel. This recipe uses the whole of clementine – including the peel. If you don’t have clementines, you can use any sweet variety of orange and remove the peel when baking.

The cake is super easy to make once you have all the ingredients ready – just mix all in a blender and bake! Also, unlike the usual sponge cakes, these are super moist themselves and don’t need to drench in any syrup. It stays good in the fridge for days and tastes even better the next day! Another unique thing about this cake – it’s butter-less and flour-less. A great vegan gluten-free cake option.

Ooh, and did I mention the heavenly orange smell in your home?!!

By the way, cooking clementines and making almond flour can be done a day in advance.

Ingredients –

Clementines – 450 gms (5-6 depending on size)
Eggs – 6 (room temperature)
Vanilla essence – 1 tsp
Granulated Sugar – 1 1/4 cups (250 g)
Baking Powder – 1 tsp
Salt – 1/4 tsp
Almond flour – 250 g (2 1/2 cup) (you can find the recipe for making almond flour at end of this post)

Procedure –

1. Take a large pan with water, place unpeeled clementines in water and bring to boil.


2. Once the water is boiled, reduce the heat and let the clementines cook for 2 hours.
3. Remove from pan, drain them properly and let them cool. If you don’t plan to use them immediately, you can cover them and keep them fridge. When you decide to use them, bring them to room temperature first.

4. Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Prepare a 9-inch springform pan by greasing the base and edges with butter. Line the base with a parchment paper for easy removal at the end.

5. Chop the cooked clementines to smaller pieces, remove the seeds if any. Put them in a blender. Add the eggs and vanilla essence to the blender and blend until you have a smooth mixture (smaller chunks of orange peels are okay).
  
6. In a large bowl, mix the almond flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add the orange-egg mixture to this and prepare the batter. Transfer the batter to the cake pan.

8. Bake it for about 50-60 minutes until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

7. Remove from oven, let the cake cool before you remove from the pan and transfer to a dish.
8. You can garnish the cake with a dusting of icing sugar, or make a glaze of sugar and butter.

How to make almond flour –

Take 250 g of almonds and soak them in water overnight. Remove from water and let them dry. Once dry, remove the peels. Place them in a food processor and grind them to a powder consistency. Make sure you don’t grind them for too long else they’ll convert into butter.
Tip – My grinder was still giving me almond chunks, so I added some part of sugar from my recipe in the grinder and got a smooth mixture without making it into a butter!