Whole orange chocolate cake

I finally got round to making this no butter, no flour whole orange cake. The idea is basically boiling an orange pretty much to death, and this, together with the ground almonds (which substitute the flour), provide the moisture to the cake. The 6 eggs (!) possibly have something to do with this too. 

This is apparently a Nigella recipe from her book Feast. As it has been published in about a billion places online already I don't feel so bad about posting parts of the recipe here (as an FYI I got it from here).

You will need:

1 large orange

6 eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
200 gr ground almonds
250 gr caster sugar
50 gr cocoa


First you boil the orange for about 2 hours. I'd suggest putting a lid on the pan as the whole kitchen filled with steam and stained our ceiling. Then drain the orange and blend it. I actually did this 2 days in advance and stored it in the fridge.

Then add the rest of the ingredients and mix them (I used an electric hand mixer) until you get a good cake mix consistency. The mix makes more than what you can fit in one loaf tin, so I had to pour some of it in a second tin - I guess about 2/3 of recipe makes enough for a regular loaf tin. Then bake at 180 degrees C. The recipe says to bake for an hour - I took my small cake out after  30 min and the big one after 45 minutes because it had started to burn. Perhaps the 180 degrees is for a non-fan oven?

The one in the front is the mini one (ie thin one) and the one in the back is the proper one, which caught a bit on the top

The cake was absolutely delicious, it is very light (probably because of the absence of butter) and very juicy from the fruit. I liked it so much I am having trouble not eating the whole thing in one sitting!