Orange and Almond Cupcakes (gluten free)

Last Sunday I had a fantastic afternoon of hunting and gathering for fruit and vegetables. I managed to get to the local farmers market, to the fruit and vegie shop and to two road side stalls. Needless to say, I returned with a great bounty, and a lot little more produce than I could handle!

Sadly, I did not get to my small bag of oranges before they started to go a bit shrivelled and sad looking. They were still great to use in baking, so I decided on this fantastic gluten-free citrus cake, which I've adapted from Nigella Lawson's recipe here.

Orange and Almond Cupcakes

INGREDIENTS

·        375g total weight on oranges (3-5 depending on size of oranges)

·        6 eggs

·        225g sugar

·        250g ground almonds

·        1 heaped teaspoon baking powder

METHOD

1. Put the oranges in a pan with some cold water, bring to the boil and cook for 2 hours. Drain and, when cool, cut each oranges in half and remove the pips.

2. Place the oranges - skins, pith, fruit and all - into a food processor and whiz until smooth pulp, or with a whizzy stick. 

Whizzy stick in action

Pulp after the whizzy stick

In a separate bowl, beat eggs, then add the ground almonds, baking powder and sugar. Mix until smooth and lump-free. Add oranges to almond-egg mixture. 

3.  Preheat the oven to 190ºC.  Line muffin tins with cupcake cases. 

Cooling cupcakes

4. Spoon about 2Tsp of mixture into each cupcake case. It will make about 18. Bake for about 45 mins, or until tops of cupcakes are golden and a skewer comes out clean when inserted into a cupcake.Remove from the oven and leave to cool.

Enjoy!

5. When the cupcakes are cool, ice with a simple glaze of icing sugar and water, or orange juice. Decorate with a little crystallised orange peel.