Flourless Strawberry Cake

'Be prepared...' - it pays to keep that old Boy Scout motto in mind when planning your bakes, especially when it comes to your own birthday cake. Having come across a huge punnet of strawberries for the ridiculously reduced price of only 59p while at the supermarket, I was all hyped up to bake myself a wonderfully pink strawberry cake. It would be a strawberry and semolina cake, I decided on the way home - I thought I had half a bag of semolina at the back of the cupboard, and of course, didn't bother to check again.

I'm sure you can guess how the rest of this story goes...I opened the cupboard to reach for the bag of semolina, only to find I had...nothing. Undeterred, I decided to use the flourless orange cake recipe and substitute strawberries for the oranges. Of course, that wasn't the end of the saga - I discovered that I only had 5 eggs and 175 grams of ground almonds (the original recipe calls for 6 eggs and 200 grams of ground almonds). If you're thinking 'Why didn't you just go to the shop to get more?' then you probably haven't been reading this blog for long. I'm lazy, and it was dark, and I was tired, and hungry, and...and...

The resulting cake was very moist indeed, but it wasn't a complete failure. In fact, the texture was fairly similar to that of a nonbaked cheesecake. I can't wait for summer to come around again so I can have tons of juicy strawberries on hand to try this recipe again.

Flourless Strawberry Cake

Ingredients 

400gm strawberries, roughly crushed

5 eggs, separated

175gm caster sugar

175gm ground almonds

1 tbsp baking powder

Directions

- Preheat oven to 180 C and lightly grease/line a 9 inch springform tin. 

- Beat egg yolks and sugar together until pale, then beat in strawberries, almonds and baking powder.

- Beat egg whites until soft peaks, then fold gently into mixture. Pour batter into baking tin, and bake for an hour until firm to the touch. 

- Cool the cake in the tin, then remove it and dust icing sugar over it before serving. Enjoy!