Almond cake

This is a proper almond cake!  Moist, sweet and decadently almondy.  I urge you to make one as soon as you can, allow it to cool, brew a strong coffee, pull up a chair and indulge in a slice or two.

I have adapted this from a recipe by Mary Berry.  Far be it from me to suggest that Mary Berry’s cakes can be improved upon, but when I made her almond cake from The Aga Book the other week, whilst I enjoyed it, it just wasn’t quite almondy enough for my taste. So I swapped the quantities of ground almond to flour and replaced one egg with 150ml of yoghurt and Bob’s your uncle, it turned out to be just what I was longing for.

175g softened butter
175g caster sugar
3 eggs
150ml natural yoghurt ( I use Greek yoghurt)
1 tsp almond extract
200g ground almonds
100g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder

25g flaked almonds for the top of the cake

Method

Beat the butter and the sugar together until light and fluffy.  Add one egg at a time, whisking well between each addition.  Add the yoghurt and the almond extract and beat well.

Add the ground almonds, flour and baking powder and fold in carefully.

Pour into a greased and lined 20cm cake tin and  sprinkle with the flaked almonds.

Bake in a preheated oven at 160°c, gas mark 3, or on the grid shelf on the floor of the Baking Oven of the Aga for about 1 hour until golden and a skewer comes out clean.

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65 thoughts on “Almond cake”

    1. Thank you Nancy. I took a look at Denise’s and was really intrigued with the use of almond paste as the basis for the cake. I must try that sometime. I think the golden colour is from my lovely home grown hen eggs. The best way to get a golden cake.

  1. I’ve got a lot of ground alm0nds in the cupboard and was wondering how to use them up ……. now I know. Thanks for the inspiration.

  2. I absolutely love almonds and they are very good for you too. I would love your version of this, the moister the better in my book, and less flour and more ground almonds is healthier in a low-carbs way.

  3. You may not feel able to say it, but I can. Of course you can improve on Mary Berry and it very much sounds as though you have. Yum yum, love the slice or two 😉

  4. I love it when you do cakes (I’m keen on Choc’s cake posts also).

    Both your cakes always look so fresh – you can’t get cakes like that anywhere. And, I can’t bake ’em like that either (Boo – but one day, I shall…)

  5. Pingback: MFB Members Blog Round Up – June 2011 | Midlands Food Bloggers

  6. I have been thinking about almond cake for weeks now and I’ve had three recipes for almond cake open on the table for the last 3 days. Now this, it sounds perfect- I am going to try it today. Hope you are having a good summer Rx

  7. I have just made your delicious cake!! Superb recipe. Love the yoghurt in it. It gives it a very subtle slightly sour taste which I love. I used sugar that I keep with vanilla pods in it to lavour and I only added half a teaspoon of almond essence as I did not want this to dominate. Glorious and fantastic. Well tweeked.

    1. Brilliant Laura, I am really pleased that you like it. I really like using yoghurt in baking, you are absolutely right about it adding just the right amount of sourness. Using vanilla sugar always makes things better. Thank you for letting me know how you got on with the recipe, I love getting feedback.

  8. I have just made this cake and eaten my first slice. We have eaten Almond cake many times in Majorca and I was trying to replicate that. This is just heavenly. I added some orange zest and replaced the yogurt with half fat creme fraiche. Love it !!!

  9. I had looking for an almond cake recipe for a long while but never found one that was almonds enough for me… Your recipe hit the spot perfectly!!! It went down a treat with everyone. So thank you very much. Will definitely be making time and again. Aisha.

  10. I made this today for the first time. It came out perfectly, and went down a treat! It seems to me that it’s a bit lighter than the Mary Berry original, which I liked a lot. It’s delicious just as it is, but I think it would also be good with slightly tart fruit in some form: fresh berries, maybe chilled applesauce? Anyway, it’s a great recipe that I will definitely return to often! Thanks, Kath!

    1. Thank you Kathy, I am really pleased to hear that you enjoyed my almond cake. I like the idea of eating it with berries, and maybe a spoonful of mascarpone. I might have to make the cake later now.

      1. I have also found that the last dry crumbs of the cake are a terrific addition to any kind of fruit crumble topping :-))) A perfect cake, you can use it down to the last crumb!

  11. Can this cake be freezed and reheated later – I would love to save it and eat it when I got bigger company.

  12. Made this for the first time today. Absolutely delicious and definitely one to be baked many times in the future. Thank you for sharing it.

  13. Hello. Cake seems delicious. Would the amount of baking time be same if I bake it in the centre/ middle rack of the oven ? Thanks 😊

    1. Hi Monisha,
      All ovens vary. If you have a fan assisted oven then I would cook it at 140 degrees centigrade using the middle rack, if you have a conventional oven then 160 degrees centigrade using the middle rack. Just check after 40 minutes to make sure it is not cooking too quickly or going too brown. The reason I advise the bottom of the baking oven of the Aga is because my oven tends to be about 160 degrees centigrade at that position. The middle shelf is about 180 degrees. It is the way the Aga works with its retained heat. If your cake is browning too quickly and not cooked through then place a piece of tin foil loosely over the top for the remaining time it takes to cook all the way through. I hope you enjoy the cake it is very almond and one of my favourites. Kath

  14. Hi, Kath, just to thank you again for this recipe. It goes from strength to strength! At the moment I am baking inquantity for a fund-raiser for the animal charity we support, and yyout almond cake always goes down splendidly, so I’ve made several of them. This kind of totally reliable, always- delicious recipe is worth its weight in gold, and yours is one of the ones I treasure and bring out again and again!

  15. I’ve tried making this 3 times and it comes out very greasy and doesn’t rise. Everything seems fine until I add the yogurt and then the batter breaks apart and gets all chunky. I think that’s causing the recipe to get messed up.

    1. Hi Amber, I am sorry you are having trouble with the recipe. I make this one very regularly and don’t have any problems with it. It does curdle a little when you add the acidic yoghurt and this is normal but shouldn’t really affect the finished texture of the cake. It is heavier than most cakes because it is mostly almonds. If you prefer you can substitute more of the almonds with flour, so you could do 100g almonds and 200g flour. This will make a lighter, less almondy cake. I hope you will try again. Very best Kath

  16. Hiya, I can’t wait to try this version as my last attempt using a differ method turned out awful. I was wondering what sized eggs did you use for this recipe?

    1. Hi Sharmin, Apologies for late reply, I use eggs from my own chickens, so they vary in size, but medium will work just fine. Let me know how it works out for you. It’s one of my favourites.

  17. Made this cake over the weekend for my almond-loving husband. Complete success, in fact I think it’s the best almond cake recipe I’ve tried – Thanks so much.
    PS it goes really well with blackberries

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