Orange & Cranberry Torte

After some consideration and a good search through the recipes in Delicious magazine I decided that I would make this Orange & Cranberry Torte to email in for their Winter Bakes feature. The recipe is by Eric Lanlard and the brief for the entry was any wintery bake... their favourite pictures will be featured in the magazine...although tasty I'm not sure this one will make the cut as it's a bit... well...errr...brown! It definitely won't be winning any style awards but it did taste good with a dob of cream!!

• 350g almonds
• 350g caster sugar
• 3 tsp ground cinnamon
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 8 large free-range eggs, beaten
• 400ml sunflower oil
• Grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
• Grated zest and juice of 1 orange
• 200g dried cranberries plus a handful to decorate
• 3 cloves

Heat the oven to 180c/fan 160c/gas 4. Butter and line a 23cm springform cake tin. Measure out the ground almonds, 300g of caster sugar, 2 tsp of cinnamon and the baking powder in to a large bowl.

Make a well and add the sunflower oil and eggs before mixing. Then add in the zests and dried cranberries. I used my new microplane grater (below) for finely zesting and it worked a treat! Once combined bake for 50 minutes - 1 hour. However, beware mine took a look longer... probably about an extra 20 minutes.

With about 5 minutes to go, gently heat the citrus juices in a saucepan with the remaining sugar, cinnamon and cloves. Dissolve the sugar and then simmer and cook for 3 minutes. When the cake is done remove it from the oven and pierce it with a skewer. Then pour the citrus syrup over the top. It then cools in the tin for an hour before turning out. Finally, decorate with a handful of dried cranberries and serve with pouring cream. Result... a tasty winter bake!

* Adapted from Eric Lanlard's Orange and Cranberry Torte recipe on the Delicious Magazine website.