Chocolate Orange Cake

This recipe is from Nigella Lawson's Feast. Susan had remembered it as a clementine recipe, and we had some, so that's how we made it. It was good but I didn't love it as much as I'd thought I would, maybe because it is classed as a flourless chocolate cake, but is not so decadent as what I had in mind, though quite nice.

2 small or 1 large thin-skinned orange, approximately 14oz total weight
6 eggs
1 heaped teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
2 cups ground almonds
1¼ cups superfine sugar
½ cup unsweetened cocoa
orange peel for decoration if wished

Put the whole orange or oranges in a pan with some cold water, bring to the boil and cook for 2 hours or until soft. Drain and, when cool, cut the oranges in half and remove any big seeds. Then pulp everything -- pith, peel and all -- in a food processor, or see below if you're proceeding by hand.

Once the fruit is cold, or near cold (though actually I most often cook the oranges the day before I make the cake), preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and line an 8 inch springform pan.

Add the eggs, baking powder, baking soda, almonds, sugar and cocoa to the orange in the food processor. Run the motor until you have a cohesive cake mixture, but still slightly knobbly with the flecks of pureed orange. Or you could chop the fruit finely by hand, and with a wooden spoon beat the eggs one by one into the sugar, alternating with spoons of mixed ground almond and cocoa, then the oranges, though I have to say I've only ever made this the lazy way.

Pour and scrape into the cake pan and bake for an hour, by which time a cake tester should come out pretty well clean. Check after 45 minutes because you may have to cover it with aluminum foil to prevent the cake from burning before it is cooked through, or indeed it may need a little less than an hour; it all depends on your oven.

Leave the cake to get cool in the pan, on a cooling rack. When the cake is cold you can take it out of the pan. Decorate with strips of orange peel or coarsely grated zest if you so wish, but it is darkly beautiful in its plain, unadorned state.

Makes about 8 slices.