It often surprises me when baking what a difference technique has, take a sponge cake for example, the basic being equal parts egg, sugar, butter and flour (a little baking powder, salt and vanilla). Cream the butter and sugar together, then add the eggs and flour and you have a pound cake, Whisk the eggs and sugar together, then add the flour and melted butter and voilà a sponge instead. Two quite different cakes, the same ingredients, same ratios, just put together differently.
This recipe should ideally be done by weight, but if you can’t be bothered weighing your eggs the minimum weight (NZ) for size 6 is 53g, 7 is 62g, and 8 is 68g.
200 grams Egg (3 size 7 eggs)
200 grams Sugar
200 grams Butter
150 grams Flour
50 grams Almond meal
6 grams Salt
1 tsp Baking powder
10 ml Orange blossom water
Jar of preserved figs (or fresh), quartered
Raw Sugar
Pre-heat the oven to 170°C.
Line the base of a spring-form cake tin with baking paper and coat the whole interior of the tin with butter. Sprinkle the base with raw sugar and arrange quartered figs.
Whisk the sugar, orange blossom water and eggs together until they have become pale yellow, and tripled in volume.
Sieve in the flour, almond meal, salt and baking powder. Gently fold through.
Melt the butter and stir in.
Pour the batter into the tin, tap the tin on the bench to remove any excess air bubbles.
Bake for 35–45 minutes, or until the cake springs back when lightly pressed and a skewer inserted comes out clean.
Allow to cool in the tin on a rack until it can be handled without burning yourself, remove the springform and turn out on to a serving plate.
