If you are a visual person like me and can gawk at food photos for hours, Himanshu's blog - The White Ramekins is one such stunning place! The colors, the props and the styling that he does are so beautiful. I simply adore his work and I am so glad he is sharing a cake with us. His Roasted Almonds Cake with Strawberries and Cream is such a perfect spring cake and the colors that he used for the backdrop are so vibrant! Thank you Himanshu for taking time to share this recipe out here.

Hi Everyone! I am Himanshu from The White Ramekins blog and I am so thrilled to be here on Playful Cooking. I have been reading Kankana’s blog since ages, even before I started writing my own blog. Her pictures and the way of story telling has always fascinated me and it’s a sheer joy to look at those amazing food pictures.

Roasted Almonds Cake

When Kankana requested me to do a guest blog post for her, I was super excited. After all I have been admiring her work for so many years.

So, I started thinking as to what should I cook for her. Eventually, I settled down to my favourite food, which had to be either Kadhi Chawal or a nice sponge cake.

I figured out that she already had the recipe of Kadhi Chawal on her blog, so it had to be the cake. Since I bake too often for my friends and family, so I wanted to share my favourite cake recipe - Roasted Almonds Cake! I kind of developed accidentally once I was trying a plain flour cake. But sometimes accident turn out to be serendipitous.

Roasted Almonds Cake With Strawberries & Cream (The White Ramekins) | Playful Cooking

A fun story behind baking this Roasted Almonds Cake

So I tell you the story behind this cake and how it turned out to be so good that it became my all time favourite. There was a recipe of vanilla cake which I was baking from my own blog once. But for some reason I wanted to cut down on the plain flour and thought to replace that with the almond meal. Now, we don’t get almond meal so easily here in India and therefore I had to make my own homemade almond flour. Starting with blanching, peeling and drying the almonds in oven to grinding them to powder. So, I had bunged in the almonds on baking sheet in oven and got busy doing some other thing.

Suddenly I realised that I had almost roasted the almonds to golden colour. They smelled great but I was terrified if that almond flavour might be overwhelming in the cake. I didn’t want to waste them though, nor I had time to do the drill again. So I decided to take the chance and finally made the cake out of that. It turned out to be so great that I named that accidental recipe as roasted almond cake. And later on it became our family favourite. The recipe calls for roasting the almonds, which might look like an extra step. But trust me that gives the cake a depth of flavour.

The cake alone itself tastes great. The topping it with some soft whipped cream and fresh strawberries adds freshness to the nutty flavour of cake. I am so glad that I baked and shared the recipe for one of my favourite food blogger friend. I hope you guys like it too!

Roasted Almonds Cake With Strawberries & Cream

Kankana Saxena

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Servings inch cake

Ingredients

For cake:
100 gm whole almonds
180 gm caster sugar
150 gm soft unsalted butter
6 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
150 gm all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt

For topping:

300 ml whipping cream
2 tablespoon icing sugar
250 gm fresh strawberries (hulled and halved)

Instructions

Blanch the almonds in boiling water for 10 minutes. Rinse under cold water and let stand for 10 minutes. Peel the skin off the almonds by squishing gently using your fingers.
Preheat the oven to 180 C/ 356 F.
Spread the almonds in single layer on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
Roast in oven for about 10-12 minutes, or until almonds look golden in colour, taking care not to burn them. Take out of oven and let cool completely. Once almonds have cooled completely, grind them in a food processor to make a fine powder. Blitz the almonds and keep checking and stirring a couple of times in between to avoid making a paste out of them.
Preheat the oven to 180 C/ 356 F. Grease a 8 inch springform cake pan and dust with flour and keep aside.
In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together, until pale and fluffy. Beat in vanilla extract. Beat in eggs one at a time, scraping the sides of the bowl, after each addition.
In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, almond meal, salt and baking powder and fold the flour mixture into butter and egg mixture, until just combined.
Pour the batter into prepared pan and bake for about 60 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean, if inserted into the centre of the cake. Cover the cake loosely with a silver foil after 30 minutes of baking. Let cool in pan for 20 minutes and then on a wire rack.
For topping, whip the cream and icing sugar in a bowl to make soft peaks. Spread the whipped cream on top of cooled cake and top with halved strawberries.