I love the smell of cardamom, ground or pods, and I use it quite liberally in curries etc… but I’ve always fancied trying it in cakes… so here it is: it has a strong distinctive flavour and the orange comes through first
Ingredients for the Streusel:
- 70g plain flour
- 60g pine nuts (¾ coarsely chopped)
- 50g sugar
- 1 tbsp grated orange zest
- 1 tsp instant coffee powder
- ½ tsp ground cardamom
- 1 pinch ground vanilla
- 50g butter, softened
Ingredients for the cake:
- 225g plain flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- ½ scant tsp salt
- 1 ¼ tsp ground cardamom
- 1 tsp instant coffee powder
- 100g sugar
- 2 tbsp finely grated orange zest
- 120g melted and cooled butter
- 2 eggs
- 120ml milk
- 110ml strong coffee, cooled
- 1 tsp coffee extract
- 1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
Preparation for the streusel:
- Toss all the ingredients except the butter in a large bowl with a wooden spoon
- Add the butter and, using your fingers, mix together until you get a crumbly mixture, of different sizes. Set aside
Preparation for the cake:
- Preheat oven to 200°C/180°fan/ Gas 5 and prepare a 20cm/ 8″ round cake tin. Place it on a baking tray
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, ground cardamom and coffee powder
- In a smaller bowl, rub the sugar and orange zest together with your fingers until the sugar is well infused
- Mix it in with the dry ingredients and blend well
- Mix all the wet ingredients together in the smaller bowl and pour over the dry ingredients. Stir gently and only until the batter is evenly blended
- Scrape the batter
- into the prepared tin and top with an even layer of the streusel. Pat gently into the batter
- Bake for about 40mn: the cake well risen, golden crumbs and clean skewer from the centre
- Transfer immediately to a wire rack to cool
