Recipe: Mandarin syrup cake

Recipe extracted from Nadia Lim's new book "Good Food Cook Book".

This is an incredibly clever cake - it's gluten free, dairy free and has no added fat (no oil or butter), yet is as moist and delicious as cakes get. It uses whole fruit boiled until soft and then you blitz it up (skin, pith and all), which gives the cake its amazing mandarin flavour and texture. It keeps well for up to a week in the fridge, can be frozen, and can be eaten cold or warm

Serves: 10

Prep time: 10 minutes

plus 1 1/2 hours to boil mandarins

Cook time: 1 hour

INGREDIENTS:
330-370g mandarins* (3- 6 whole mandarins, depending on size)

200g blanched ground almonds

1 cup white sugar

5 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract or essence

1 tsp baking powder

SYRUP 1/4 cup sugar

Juice of 1 mandarin

Juice of 1 lime

Natural unsweetened Greek yoghurt or creme fraiche to serve

METHOD:
1.Place whole mandarins in a large saucepan and cover with plenty of cold water. Cover with a lid and boil gently for 1 1/2 hours. Drain and allow to cool slightly.

2.Preheat oven to 180C. Grease and line a 21cm round springform cake tin with baking paper. Remove the stem end of the mandarins, then cut in half and remove any pips. Place fruit (skin, pith, flesh and all) in a food processor or blender and blitz until smooth. Add all other cake ingredients and blitz until well combined.

3.Pour into prepared cake tin and bake for 1 hour or until a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.

4.Cover cake with tinfoil halfway through cooking time to avoid the top browning too much.

5.Remove cake from oven and leave in the tin while you make the syrup.

6.Mix sugar, mandarin and lime juice together and pour over cake while warm.

7.Allow cake to cool slightly before removing from tin. The cake is nice served warm or cold with Greek yoghurt or creme fraiche.

* Tip: If you don't have mandarins, use the same weight of small tangelos for the cake and 1 tangelo for the syrup.

*Check baking powder is gluten-free; dairy free without yoghurt or creme fraiche.

Per serve: energy 1254kj (299 cal); carbohydrate: 32.8g; protein: 8.9g; fat: 14.9g Saturated fat: 3g