This is one of those dense, pudding-suitable cakes, known in America as tortes, in which ground nuts are used in place of flour. I’m not sure that you would, unless told, detect the presence of the white chocolate, but its vanilla-scent butteriness lends itself beautifully to the delicate nuttiness of the ground almonds. This is a cake that looks plain, but its rich, eggy, marzipan texture makes it anything but. To taste this at its summery best, serve a roughly thrown together salad of mangoes, spritzed with lime, and maybe even dotted with raspberries, along with.
175g white chocolate
150g soft unsalted butter
100g caster sugar
6 large eggs, separated
150g ground almonds
drop almond extract
to serve:
2 mangoes
juice of 1 lime
150g raspberries (optional)
Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4. Grease and line a 23cm Springform tin; if you’ve got some almond oil to hand, use that, otherwise butter is of course fine.
Chop the chocolate and melt it in a bowl over a pan of simmering water or for a couple of minutes or so on medium in the microwave. Don’t expect white chocolate ever to melt quite into the molten smoothness of dark: once it’s lost its shape, it’s melted enough; any more and it will start to seize. Put to one side while you get on with the cake.
Beat the butter until very soft, then add 50g of the sugar and cream again. Still beating, add the egg yolks one at a time, waiting till each one is incorporated before adding the next, then slowly scrape in the cooled, melted chocolate, beating firmly as you do so. Once the chocolate’s smoothly incorporated, add the ground almonds and the almond extract, beating again to mix.
Whisk the egg whites till peaks begin to form, then slowly add the remaining 50g sugar until gleaming, glossy and firm.
Add a big dollop to the cake batter and stir well to lighten the mixture, then fold in the rest, gently, in three to four parts.
Pour into the prepared tin, and bake for 45–50 minutes or until cooked through. You shouldn’t expect a plunged-in cake tester to come out exactly clean – this is, after all, a dense, damp sort of a cake – but no uncooked batter should be clinging to it. Anyway, when the cake’s ready it should be beginning to come away from the sides of the tin. You should check the cake after about 30 minutes, though, as at this stage of cooking you’ll probably need to cover the cake loosely with foil to stop it burning. Don’t worry if it’s caught slightly though: some bronzing at the top is a good thing.
Remove from the oven and sit the cake in its tin on a wire rack for about 20 minutes, before unspringing and inverting it, and letting it cool completely, though you can just as easily leave the cake in its tin, on the rack, to cool completely. This makes life much easier if you’re transporting it, which – if you’re picnic-bound, say – you might well want to.
Just before eating the cake, peel and chop up the mangoes roughly, wring out the mango skins over the fruit and add any mango juice that’s collected while chopping. Add the raspberries if using, and squeeze in the juice of half the lime. Taste to see if you want the remaining half squeezed over, too. Toss well, but gently, to combine and serve alongside the richly contrasting cake.
Serves 8.