Almond, White Chocolate & Lemon 'Capri' Cake
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Summer has really arrived here in London and I am certainly making the most of it! One of my favourite things to do when the sun is out is a picnic with friends in one of the many beautiful parks of the city.
So two weeks ago we met Sam, Hannah, Wendy and her husband Charles in Hampstead Heath for a day of eating, photographing and playing Frisbee! If you are new to London, I recommend visiting this park, it's one of my favourites!
We planned this months in advance and were lucky that it was a warm sunny day! I was eager to finally meet Sam and Hannah dog, an adorable Frenchie bulldog called Eggs Benedict! Our #frenchiepicnic was a success and playing with #tinyeggs was so much fun! He's the cutest dog ever!
It also happened to be the day after Hannah's birthday, so I baked a cake to celebrate. Sam and Hannah follow the Paleo diet, so I prepared a gluten-free cake using ground almonds.
'Torta Caprese' is a traditional Italian cake named after the island of Capri where the recipe comes from. It's traditionally made with dark chocolate, but I made it with white chocolate and lemon zest instead (as suggested on Tzatziki a colazione blog).
Ingredients
- 200g caster sugar
- 380g unblanched almonds
- 5 eggs
- 240g butter, melted
- 200g white chocolate, melted
- zest of 2 unwaxed lemons
- icing sugar for decoration
Preparation
Preheat the oven to 170°C.
Grind the almonds to a coarse powder. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together, until light and creamy.
Melt the butter and chocolate and let them cool down, then pour them into the cake mix.
Add the ground almonds.
Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the cake mix.
Line a round 23cm cake tin with parchment paper. Pour the cake mixture and bake for about 1 hour.
Remove from the oven, allow to cool and decorate with icing sugar.
The cake was lovely! Sam and Hannah are used to a sugar free Paleo diet, so found the cake to be very sweet. For me it was just about right, but if you don't like very sweet cakes, you will need to reduce or halve the amount of sugar.