Categories: Food

Almond Cake

A short list of ingredients and a 9-inch pan puts you on track to bake this golden almond cake. It’s not flashy, but it’s one you’ll remember. The texture is dense and rich, the almond flavor strong. Butter browns where the cake touches the pan for a fragrant hint of that unique magic – my favorite bites.

Almond Cake: The Ingredients

Almond Paste: I’ve baked this cake with a range of almond pastes. The most common one for me, easy to grab at the grocery stores here, is the Odense brand paste. If I remember ahead of time, I’ll order or track down some Mandolin almond paste. I also have it on my list to test the Amoretti brand made with blanched almonds here in Southern California.
Almond Extract: Almond extract dials up and intensifies the almond flavor in this cake. That said, if you don’t keep almond extract on hand, don’t let that detract you from baking this beauty. Substitute an equal amount of vanilla extract.
Lemon: I like to use lemon to punctuate the almond flavor in this cake, but It’s hard to go wrong with just about any citrus. You could try market lime, lime, grapefruit, orange, or a blend.
Dry Ingredients: Flour, baking powder, salt.
Sugar: just standard granulated sugar here.
Eggs: This batter is egg-forward, so we bake it at a lower temperature. If your oven runs hot, be sure to dial it back a bit.
Powdered sugar: as a finishing touch, to make the cake pretty and add a sweet punctuation to each bite.

The Method:

The most annoying thing about this cake is that I have you use a food processor to really cut the almond paste into the sugar. You want a sandy texture without big lumps of paste, so it’s the best way. It should end up looking something like this:
Then, you use an electric mixture to cream the butter and almond-sugar mixture together. You know I wouldn’t normally have you pull out two appliances if you could do it by hand, but this is actually pretty quick and gets the job done well. Here’s what your cake batter should look like going into the pan:

The cake is deeply golden when it comes out of the oven. The key to finishing strong is be patient and allow the cake to cool all the way to room temperature. Then you dust it with lots of powdered sugar. Here’s what the cake should look like after it comes out of the oven and is released from the pan.

And this is a slice ready to to enjoy! Fully dusted!

Last thing, if you love to bake with almond paste, or if you become a fan of this cake – these macaroons are the perfect tiny bite cookie. Delivering a similar almondy goodness and texture.