It all started a couple of years ago when, at a picnic with other members of Eurotoques, Danette O Connell (of the late lamented Danettes Feast in Carlow) produced Claudia Roden’s delicious Orange and Almond Cake*.
I remembered being fascinated with this recipe since the first time I read it some years before in a magazine and had cut it out and pinned it up in my kitchen . And there it stayed, gathering grease.There was something about the recipe (which involved boiling oranges for two hours and then liquidizing them) that both repelled and intrigued. However I failed the courage test and, over time, it fell to pieces, untried.
Then along came Danette and her picnic dessert. It was a huge success, a truly delicious and unusual cake. Wonderfully moist, and with a real tang of fresh orange flavour. I begged the recipe from Danette and this time I got to make it.
The cake became a standard in the dessert menu of my restaurant.
Coupled with a Cardomum Creme Brulee* it became a bit of a signature dish.
Cooking in restaurant quantities,you tend ,over time, to develop short cuts and this recipe with its 2 hour boiling was ripe for one.I can’t remember what genius first suggested cooking the oranges in the microwave but who ever did was bang on and the -very much shorter- cake recipe was born, and became the new standard.

Wearing another hat I give cookery classes with Pierce and Valerie Mc Auliffe in Dunbrody Abbey cookery school. Recipes current in the restaurant tend to turn up at these. That was how I ended up divulging the secrets of my Orange and Almond Cake Mark 2 (The Microwave Version) to a most appreciative group of students.
Now this recipe was bound to be a success in a cookery class. As well as being simple and delicious it provides culinary justification for owning a microwave and proves that we can use it for something other than re-heating and defrosting.
Even better this class provided one of those serendipitous moments which happen (much more often than one would care to admit) at cookery classes.This is the moment when “by your pupils you are taught”.
A student remarked as she saw the oranges coming tender out of the microwave after a mere 5 mts. cooking. – “Wouldn’t that be a handy way to make marmalade”.
The idea kept jumping around my mind as I drove that day back to Waterford. Then another memory surfaced, of my sister in law Una making her marmalade in the conventional way but chopping the mixture in a food processor. By the time I got home I was like a man possessed, barely had time to grab some oranges as I ran through the restaurant, and into my kitchen to make my first batch of ” Fifteen Minute Marmalade“*
It was wonderful, as well as being just about the simplest recipe imaginable, the resulting marmalade was delicious. Possessing a sweet freshness totally undiminished by the usual long boiling.

But don’t go yet. We haven’t got to chocolate yet.

At the end of this summer and a shockingly self indulgent holiday in Provence the decision was made ( not really by me) that I should go on another of my diets. Not one to be swayed by fads and trends, and since the Atkins and Weightwatchers had defeated me, I decided -briefly – to have a go off the South Beach Diet. My research for this consisted of borrowing the introductory book from a friend, using all that I found appealing and then waiting for the pounds to fall off.
What I found most appealing (as well as the bacon and eggs for breakfast) was its eschewing of animal fats and espousal of Olive Oil, this,coming after my Provencal holiday, was something I felt I could live with.
Then happens my next moment of serendipity.
I borrowed from the library a book on the chemistry of cooking called “What Einstein told his Cook” by Robert Wolke. In it he had a recipe which seemed tailor made for me and my version of my latest diet. This was a Chocolate and Olive Oil Mousse*. Perfect, no cream, no unsalted butter, just eggs sugar and chocolate.This rang a faint bell and I went back to the ever reliable Dennis Cotter and his” Paradiso Seasons” cook book. Yes there it was , along with a wonderful carrot of a phrase ” I envy anybody trying this recipe for the first time”. I was, and did and was conquered. No it isn’t the least oily, and the chocolate comes across as wonderfully intense when its flavours aren’t dulled with cream.

Now we get to the final chapter, when all the loose ends get tied up.
I was having one of my nights of insomnia when (as one does) I started planning tomorrow’s recipes. Thinking about the Chocolate and Olive Oil Mousse it struck me; what if (Heaven Forbid) the South Beach people were wrong, that Olive Oil was fattening after all, it is possible. Both fat and carbohydrates run in and out of the fattening/non fattening leagues frequently.
But how could one make something out of chocolate without adding any fat at all ? I can see you are there before me. Using cooked Oranges of course.
Thus was born my Chocolate,Orange and Almond Cake*. Either totally healthy (no butter or flour) or totally unhealthy (nuts and chocolate) depending which diet you are following. But totally delicious, totally moist, and loved at first bite by even my sternest critic, my wife .
Eat it warm or at room temperature, accompany it with absolutely nothing or if you feel you must with some Greek yogurt or some fromage frais but never with cream.
We don’t want you getting fat.

*All available under recipes on my web page