This is a superb cake recipe from the Polpo cookbook. It’s suitable for coeliacs as it’s completely free of flour. It has a grown-up decadent taste, with its tangy orange scent and slightly bittersweet Campari sticky syrup. Serve it with very good vanilla ice-cream for dessert or have a slice with a cup of coffee.  I made it last weekend for friends and it was a huge success.

Ingredients

• 23cm cake tin

• 8 blood oranges

• 350g Greek yogurt

• 600g caster sugar

• 4 medium free-range eggs, lightly beaten

• 250g butter, melted then cooled

• 350g fine semolina

• 100g ground almonds

• 100ml Campari

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 170C or Gas Mark 3.

2. Finely grate the zest of four of the oranges and set the fruit to one side.
   

3. In a large mixing bowl, place the yogurt, 300g of the caster sugar and the lightly beaten eggs. Stir in the cooled butter.

4. Fold through all the dry ingredients including the orange zest. Scrape the mixture into a 23cm greased cake tin and put in the oven.

5. After 20 minutes or so, check to see if the cake is ready by gently pressing the centre to see if it springs back. Depending on your oven, it may need a little more time. In truth, most times I’ve made this recipe, it has required more than 30 minutes, sometimes up to 40 minutes, to be sure it’s cooked in the centre, so watch carefully & use a skewer to check the centre – it should come out clean. when the cake is ready, remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin. It took about 45 minutes in my oven!

6. While the cake is cooking you can make the syrup. Put the juice of the 8 oranges, the remaining sugar and the Campari into a heavy-based saucepan and bring slowly to the boil. Allow to simmer and skim off any white scum. When reduced to a medium/thick syrup, remove from the heat.

7. Prick the top of the cake all over using a toothpick and spoon the syrup carefully over the warm sponge in a couple of batches until everything has been absorbed. Your cake is now ready!