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Clean recipe · cooking.nytimes.com

Tender Almond Cake

A delightfully tender almond cake that’s quite easy to put together, this recipe is from an old friend, Salvatore Messina. Everyone adores it. Since it has some similarity to other Italian almond cakes, I naturally assumed it to be his family’s, passed down from his Sicilian grandmother. But it turned out to have no Italian storyline. Sal adapted it from a recipe for tarta de Santiago, the traditional almond cake from Galicia, Spain, using less sugar, more orange zest and no cinnamon. It’s heavenly. David Tanis

Original recipe: cooking.nytimes.com

Yield:
10 servings
Total:
1 hr
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Ingredients

  1. 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened, for greasing the pan
  2. 8 ounces/227 grams blanched almonds
  3. 6 large eggs, separated
  4. 1 ¼ cups/250 grams granulated sugar
  5. 1 orange, zested
  6. 1 lemon, zested
  7. ¼ teaspoon almond extract
  8. Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line the bottom of a 9-inch springform pan with parchment paper and grease the sides with butter.
  2. Pulse almonds a few times in a food processor, then grind them, until they become a coarse meal, about 30 seconds to 1 minute.
  3. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat egg yolks and sugar on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 1 minute. (Alternatively, use a large bowl and a hand mixer.) Beat in ground almonds, zests and almond extract until incorporated. Transfer mixture to another bowl and thoroughly wipe out stand mixer bowl or clean out the large bowl. (You don’t want any egg yolk present, as they can inhibit the whipping of the egg whites.)
  4. In the clean bowl, beat egg whites to stiff peaks on medium-high speed, 1 to 2 minutes. Incorporate the whites into the egg-sugar-almond mixture until no white streaks remain, then spread into the prepared pan.
  5. Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 30 to 40 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean, indicating the cake is cooked.
  6. Cool in the pan on a rack. Run a knife around the edge of the cake to loosen, and transfer to a serving platter. Dust with confectioners’ sugar before serving.