In England I love the stubbornness of the people to fully embrace the metric system. The milkman will still deliver pints of milk to your doorstep but at the supermarket you buy it in litres. I have bought all my cake tins in cm, but cake boxes to put them in are all in inches. And marzipan. You can buy a pound of it, only it’s labelled 454grams. A little patience trawling round the local supermarkets will help you find marzipan in the denomination of your choice. If you are lucky enough to live near a Waitrose they will sell you 500g of the good stuff, Sainsbury and Morrisons are all 454g.
Ingredients
250g marzipan; softened and chopped into large chunks
250g unsalted butter; softened and chopped into large chunks
150g caster sugar
5 large eggs
150g rice flour
1 & half tsp gluten free baking powder
Few drops of almond extract
Smattering of flaked/nibbed almonds
Preheat the oven to 170C/150C fan and prepare a 22cm (or 8inch!) round cake tin with grease-proof paper. Put the marzipan, butter and sugar into a food processor and blitz until it forms a rough paste. Then add the eggs one at time with a little blitz in-between. Then add the flour, baking powder and almond extract and mix until fully combined. The mixture may be quite runny but this is OK. Scrape the mixture into the cake tin and sprinkle the almonds on top. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. I do tend to find with some of the gluten-free cakes you may not get a good rise. Take out of the oven and let cool slightly before turning out. This is a nice moist cake that will keep well for a couple of days in an air-tight container.
This was heavily adapted from a Nigella Lawson recipe.
© Sarah-Jane and Stephen Lewis. All rights reserved.
a Kitchen in Hitchin 
I can’t tell you how many times I have to google how many grams a cup of butter is. Every. Single. Time. You’d think I’d write it down somewhere!!!