Mandarins. Mandarins. Mandarins.
How wonderfully understated are mandarins?! Citrus on a whole just amazes me. The season is long, the fruit lasts for months on the tree and is producing its next round of buds before the last fruit it picked.
If you don’t have a mandarin tree, perhaps I can persuade you. Out rural, it seems that EVERY property has a mature citrus tree, and many homeowners look at them delightfully as they would a flowering cherry. Pleasant to look at, but little else. Such a shame! The fruit is so prolific; the season seems endless; and such a delight to be able to stroll down the garden and pluck morning tea from a tree.
Rather than planting an orchard of mandarins, I’d probably suggest one is good for now. I have three but then I have a vivid imagination of the untold ways to preserve them to feed a small army, or in case of a zombie apocalypse.
One of the many ways which I adore, is to use the whole fruit in baking, minus the pips.
Back to the focus at hand: delicious, juicy mandarins. So, for this recipe it is whole fruit (washed first – not that I use pesticides but there is always dirt, and whatever may have drifted from yonder field) and quartered, only to flick out any seeds and to scrape away the centre white pith that can be a little bitter.
I am doing my utmost to be gluten-free by choice. I am not a coeliac but know that gluten isn’t a friend to auto immune sufferers, so I’m being nice to my body to lend it a helping hand. So, this slice is wonderful because I can eat it too! Almond meal is wonderful and makes for a dense but moist slice, keeping for days in an airtight container.
Almond Mandarin Slice
Ingredients
- 1 cup brown sugar, tightly packed
- 125g butter, softened
- 3 eggs
- 3 whole mandarins, approx 1 cup of puree
- 1 1/2 cups almond meal
- 1/3 cup cornflour
- 1/2 cup dark chocolate drops
- icing sugar, to dust
Method
- Preheat oven to 170°C (fan bake) and line a square cake tin with grease-proof paper.
- Beat together sugar and butter into a cream, using an electric whisk or beater. Add eggs one at a time, beating in between.
- Wash mandarins; quarter and run a knife along the centre white pith line, flicking out the seeds as you go. Puree to a consistency of choice (slightly chunky if you like rind in your baking), then add to the wet butter mix.
- Fold in almond meal, sieved cornflour and chocolate drops. The mix will be moist, but don’t be concerned.
- Transfer batter into the tin, then bake for approx 40 minutes, or until a skewer comes out nice and clean without sticky raw dough.
- Allow to cool; sprinkle with icing sugar; and demolish!
Enjoy.
