Quince Almond cake

 

Ingredients

250g butter, at room temperature

1 1/4 cups caster sugar

1 tsp finely grated lemon rind

3 eggs

1/2 cup almond meal

1/4 cup flaked almonds

3/4 cup milk

2 1/4 cups self-raising flour, sifted

Icing sugar, to serve

Poached quinces

2 large quinces, peeled, quartered, cored (see Note)

1 cup caster sugar

1/2 cinnamon quill 

Method

Poach the quinces: 

Place 3 cups (750ml) water and sugar in a medium saucepan. Stir over low heat until sugar dissolves. Add cinnamon and quince. Bring to the boil, reduce heat and simmer for 1 1/2 hours or until slightly pink and tender. Set aside to cool. Slice quinces.

Preheat oven to 180C or 160C fan forced. Grease base and sides of a 22cm spring form pan (or a nest of smaller pans*) and line with baking paper.

Beat butter, sugar and lemon rind in a bowl until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time then stir in almond meal and flaked almonds. Stir in milk and flour. 

Spoon 2/3 of batter into prepared pan/s. Top with half of the quinces and spoon in the remaining batter. Top with remaining quince. 

Bake for 1hr 20 mins or until a skewer inserted in centre comes out clean. Stand in pan for 5 mins before turning out.

Serve cake warm or at room temperature sprinkled with icing sugar

Chook's note:  the quinces I used for my first batch came from making quince and rosemary jelly. I simply reserved the fruit and froze it until I was ready to use them.  It tasted perfectly fine.
When cooking the quinces, I prefer cassia to cinnamon as for me it has a darker richer flavour. Its a matter of choice. You could even use Allspice berries or no spices at all - let the quinces tel their own story.
as for choice of pans. I prefer to make a few smaller cakes rather than one large cake. They freeze well and are less tempting!
As for serving. Fine with icing sugar as the flavours really reach out but a big dollop of plain yogurt and wee drizzle of honey works beautifully too.