Italian is such a beautiful language! Most Italian phrases sound poetic, warm, and enticing… For example, this title translates as “lemon and almond cake,” but by sticking with the original Italian, I can pretend that it’s not really a cake, and therefore, it is doable. 😉 This recipe came from Fer’s blog (Chucrute com Salsicha), where I find a lot of inspiration, and she convinced me to ignore my cake-phobia and give it a try.
Done! I can’t say it was painless, but it wasn’t as horrible as some of my past cake experiences.
TORTA DI LIMONE E MANDORLE
(recipe adapted by Fer, original found in Twelve: A Tuscan Cookbook)
125 g softened butter
125 g granulated sugar
3 eggs, separated
125 g almond flour
60 g all purpose flour, sifted
1 tsp baking powder
juice and zest of 2 lemons
powdered sugar (optional)
Heat the oven to 355F / 180 C.
Prepare a springform pan (8 inches diameter) by coating it with butter and dusting with flour. Take a deep breath and beat the butter with the sugar until it forms a cream. Hope that the stars are correctly aligned so that the elusive cream stage appears in recognizable form. Take another deep breath and add the egg yolks, one by one, beating after each addition. Calm yourself, collect yourself, and move away from the Kitchen Aid mixer. In a large bowl, combine the flours with the baking powder, mix them well together, and add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture. Add the lemon juice and zest and mix to incorporate. Stop hyperventilating. Beat the egg whites until soft peaks form, and fold them into the cake batter, trying to avoid deflating the egg whites too much. Cross your fingers for sustained alignment of the stars.
Spoon the batter into the prepared pan, and hope it will be enough to cover its whole surface, as cake batters tend to dissipate into thin air and never ever fill the pan called for in the recipe (which is very annoying!). Bake for 30 to 40 minutes (mine baked for 43 minutes and 19 seconds), until the cake is lightly golden. Allow it to cool before opening the springform pan. If desired, dust with powdered sugar.
ENJOY!
to print the recipe, click here
para receita em portugues, siga esse link…
Comments: This was a lovely cake, I’m so glad that I made it! If you have Meyer lemons, use them, as Fer recommended. The almond flour brings an interesting texture: a little more dense, but it quickly melts in your mouth, with a bright lemony finish. It sure brightened up our lab meeting last Friday… 😉
Bewitching Kitchen 
OMG, Sally, I HAVE to make this cake. The combination of lemons and almonds sounds awesome!
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Yeah, lemons and almonds are a great match! The original recipe calls for finely ground almonds, but Fer used almond flour in her cake, and I followed her… excellent!
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Sounds delicious and I LOVED your editorial comments in the recipe! =)
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Thanks, Abby!
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Wow! That’s beautiful. I was thinking about making a lemon/almond cake around Christmas but then didn’t get to it…now it’s on my list for this week. Almond flour has about 1/4 the carbohydrates of flour so since I have to limit the carbs I’m always looking for good ways to use it.
I ran this cake through my nutrition calculation software (substituting 25 g — 1 cup — of no-calorie granulated sweetener for the sugar) and it’s only 184 calories and 11 grams of carbohydrates per serving (based on 8 servings per cake and without the optional powdered sugar). Very doable for my glucose control diet…
Thanks for the inspiration…!
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Thanks for the nutritional info, Stephen! I hope you caught my mistake in the original post, I forgot to include when to add the lemon and zest. Now it’s corrected
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I love anything lemony and will try this for sure. When or how do you adds the lemon to the cake?
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Major oooops…. when I translated it from Portuguese, that phrase got deleted in one of my revisions…. shame, shame, shame on me!
Glad you noticed. I corrected in the text, will remove the PDF file to make another version later today.
thanks for letting me know, Anita!
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Thanks for correcting the pdf file. I had printed out the old version to make it next weekend, I probably would have puzzled when to put the lemons in… Going to print it out again…
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I wish I could taste it. Looks like my kind of cake, no layers:)
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It looks so great with the powdered sugar on top! Sounds delicious too with the almond flour and lemon.
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Looks perfect and the dusting over the plate, immaculate presentation!
If someone gave me that in a restaurant I would be very grateful!
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Sally, that cake looks wonderful! Seeing the other things you’ve baked, I can’t believe you have trouble with cakes! 🙂
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Pingback: Torte di Limone e Mandorle – Lemon and Almond Cake | Family & Food & Other Things
I finally made this cake – it was awesome!!!
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Thank you for linking back to this cake Sally
I love almonds and I am curious to see what they do in this cake, pinned to try real soon
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