recipe
Bittersweet whole citrus and olive oil cake
It didn’t just happen overnight. Upon reflection, it’s actually really difficult to pinpoint the time I started to prefer marmalade over jam. Is my palate getting more sophisticated or is it just catering to an overexposed and really hard-working sensory system? I used to watch in wonder as the older members of our community cracked huge quantities of pepper over an egg. Now that’s me.
Not all flavours are enjoyed from a young age. A love of bitter tastes often develops with time. The presence of bitter compounds in foods can often indicate something toxic that should not be ingested, so a young palate avoiding it makes sense: it’s a sort of survival mechanism to stop us eating dangerous elements such as arsenic that present in some foods in the wild. This prompts the question: why am I more drawn to bitter flavours the more I age?
Now is citrus season. In another seeming contradiction, my thoughts of citrus usually involves the beach, Europe and summer sunshine. In Sicily this cake is made using mostly oranges, but I am lucky enough to have access to a diverse range of citrus, so I like to have a mixture. This may become a deep dive, as citrus fruits come in a vast array of varieties. There are hundreds of varieties of oranges alone, which is even more crazy once you learn that the orange itself is a hybrid of two other citrus. The key element when using different types is choose those that are mostly sweet and don’t have too much white pith. In this recipe grapefruit and pomelo, for example, would not work as substitutes.
Looking at the flavours and elements in this recipe, nothing is particularly sweet. The inclusion of olive oil and a bay leaf attest to this and highlight the only sweet element:
the citrus flesh. You can also use other hard herbs such as thyme to create a complex flavour that doesn’t overwhelm the citrus. Bitterness has a place in creating balance, but on its own it may be too confronting. Therefore bittersweet flavours are that contradiction that creates the complexity I really love in such simple dishes.
Time: 3 hours preparation + 40 minutes cooking
- 8 whole citrus (rangpur lime, orange, Meyer lemon, tangelo)
- 4 bay leaves
- 100ml olive oil
- 5g salt
- 150g white sugar
- 8 large eggs
- 300g brown sugar
- 400g almond meal
- 20g baking powder
- icing sugar and cultured cream to serve
- Wash the citrus well to remove any residue, then place half of these whole fruit into a pot and cover with water. Add two of the bay leaves, put the lid on the pot and boil gently for two hours, topping up the water to ensure the fruit remains covered during this process.
- Remove the citrus then place them into an upright blender with the olive oil and salt and puree until the mixture is the consistency of cake batter.
- Slice the other four citrus into rounds and place into a shallow stainless steel pot with 200 millilitres of water, the white sugar and the other two bay leaves. Simmer at a low temperature for 30 minutes or until they turn completely opaque. Once cool, roughly chop half of the citrus into a small dice and keep the most intact slices to finish the cake.
- Separate the egg yolks and whites. Mix the yolks with the brown sugar in a stand mixer with the whisk attachment until they have become pale or roughly doubled in size.
- In a separate bowl whisk the egg whites until they have reached stiff peaks.
- Add the almond meal, baking powder and citrus puree to the egg yolk mixture, then fold the egg white through.
- Pour this mixture into a lined, large springform cake tin and bake at 180ºC for about 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean from the centre of the cake.
- Remove from the oven and lay the citrus slices over the top while the cake is still warm. This will help the flavour integrate and the fruit will set better and cut more easily.
- Allow to cool completely before cutting. Serve with a dusting of icing sugar and a dollop of cultured cream on the side.
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on July 12, 2025 as "Bittersweet symmetry".
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