Delicious and super moist Orange Almond Ricotta Cake is another contribution to the family of upside-down cakes on my blog. With its lovely taste of organic oranges, shiny orange colour and the top being decorated with slices of organic oranges, this cake is such a beautiful and real orange cake to serve to your invites. Ricotta makes it even more moist and healthier as you can use less butter than in casual cakes. Mmmm!
I discovered the original recipe on Smitten Kitchen, where the cake is made with blood oranges. But as I was not able to get bio blood oranges in none of the shops around, I used normal non-treated oranges. I also used normal flour instead of the corn flour, adapted a bit the dosage of particular ingredients and added a bit of almond essence.
I already did this Orange Almond Ricotta Upside-Down Cake several times and each time it has a lot of success. It is an ideal cake to do in the winter season, as the oranges are everywhere, with ricotta and almonds being available during the whole year. Maybe it looks difficult to you, but it is actually pretty easy to do! You just have to pay attention to two things: carefully folding in the snow whites and then removing the mould so that you have the cake out in one piece.
- ½ cup cane sugar
- 1 tbsp. water
- 2 bio oranges
- 100 g cane sugar
- 80 g butter, melted
- 3 eggs (separated whites and yolks)
- 150 g ricotta
- 1 tsp. almond essence
- ½ tsp. salt
- 120 g ground almonds
- 60 g flour (I used whole meal flour)
- 2 tbsp. apricot jam
- Preheat the oven to 160°C. Cut a round of parchement paper and line the bottom of a round cake pan with it.
- Grate zest from both oranges (only the orange part). Juice one orange and cut the other one into thin slices.
- Fill ½ of a cup with sugar and add 1 tablespoon of water. Mix until the structure reminds a thick paste. Spread the paste over the bottom of the cake pan lined with a parchement paper with it and place the orange slices on it.
- In a large bowl, mix the sugar with melted butter, and then add egg yolks one by one. Add the orange zest and juice, ricotta and almond extract and mix until smooth. Sprinkle with salt and stir in the almonds and flour. Mix until combined well.
- Whip the egg whites until firm enough and then carefully fold in to the cake batter.
- Spread the batter over the oranges in the cake mould and bake for about 45 minutes in the preheated oven (do the toothpick test to be sure the cake is done and if not, leave for another 5 minutes).
- Leave the cake cool down for few minutes, then detach it from the mould edge using a knife and invert onto a serving plate. Spread 2 tablespoons of apricot jam over the cake so that it gets a nice shiny finish. Store in the fridge up to 2-3 days.
- Gluten-free option: use corn meal instead of the normal flour
Have you tried the recipe?
Please do let me know how it turned out – you can do that either via leaving a comment below or sharing your picture on Instagram using the hashtag #1001voyagesgourmands !