Almond cake with quince glaze

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Almond cake with quince glaze

I love quince! So I was very happy to be given a jar of quince jelly recently (Thanks, Ellie!) It’s delicious on toast, of course, but it’s so pretty, and has such a lovely, distinctive, mysterious flavor, that I knew I had to make something else with it as well. Obviously I needed to make a cake. Somewhere in the back of my muddled mind, I remembered reading about a Uruguayan confection that combined quince and dulce de leche. So I wanted the cake to have a hint of dulce de leche about it. It doesn’t actually contain any, but it’s made with sweetened condensed milk and brown sugar, so it has that rich, caramel-y flavor to it. It’s a dense cake, and the almonds add a nice texture to it. The flavor of the cake itself is fairly simple, so that the quince-y quinciness shines through in all of its delightful flavor.

Here are two versions of Mr Jelly Lord, by Jelly Roll Morton. Don’t you love that song title? And the song?

1 stick (1/2 cup)softened unsalted butter
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1 cup sliced almonds
1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk

2 or 3 T quince jelly

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the vanilla and eggs, and beat until light and fluffy.

Add the dry ingredients and mix well.

Process the almonds and the evaporated milk until you have a smoothish paste. It should still have a bit of almond-y texture.

Add the milk & almond mixture. Mix well.

Bake at 350 (preheated!) for about half an hour to forty minutes, till it’s quite brown on top, and springs back when you lightly touch it.

Let it cool. In a small bowl, stir the quince jelly till it’s spreadable. Spread it on the top of the cake, letting it drip down the sides delightfully in a few places.

Eat! This would be good with a little lightly sweetened, lightly whipped, vanilla flavored cream.

8 thoughts on “Almond cake with quince glaze”

    • Hello! I’m sorry, I forgot to add some important details!! I used a regular cake pan – 9 ” (you could use 8″ and that would be fine.) And yes, butter and flour. I actually cut a circle of tinfoil and put that in the bottom and butter it. If I had parchment I’d use that, but I don’t!

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  2. Clair: I have mentioned in the past my early infatuation with New Orleans jazz, Jelly Roll was one of my early idols. There was hardly in any jazz on BBC back then, late 1940’s, actually there were only two ‘channels’, BBC Home service and BBC light program. and then one day they announced another ‘channel’, creatively enough it was to be called the BBC third program. It was to be only classical, not just classical but very OBSCURE classical, medieval Romanian etc. And then one day I heard an announcement that there was to be a program devoted to the music of Jelly Roll Morton, it was several weeks away but I drooled at the thought. In the meantime I’d volunteered for the RAF, they sent me all the papers and forms and train tickets and I was to show up at RAF station Cardington at 3pm on a certain Saturday. Guess what? The JRM program was scheduled to begin at 3pm on that day! I was going to miss it!
    I arrived at the scheduled time and as I got off the bus at the RAF station guardroom I heard the sounds of Jelly Roll coming from an open window, I put down my suitcase and leaned against that wall for the next hour, for a jazz starved teenager it was wonderful.There was one detail of trivia in the program that stayed with me, it was that Jelly Roll was a Catholic and that he died in LA in 1941.
    I found myself in LA in 1958 and one of the first things I did was to check the yellow pages for Catholic cemeteries, there was only one. I drove there and asked at the office for the location of Ferdinand Morton who’d died in 1941, it was a scene from Dickens, an old man on a high stool with an eyeshade, he leafed through a huge volume of handwritten records and finally said ‘Here he is, lot 347’ and he filled out a card for me. I found it and flush with the grass was a small bronze plaque that said, Ferdinand Morton, ‘Jelly Roll’ 1985 – 1941.
    I took a picture.

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    • Hello, Tony! Wonderful stories, as usual. I love the thought of music reaching you out of an open window, at what must have been a life-changing moment. Would make a good short story!

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  3. Pingback: Dulce de leche blondies | Out of the Ordinary

  4. Claire,
    I served the cake this weekend to some of Sam’s old in both senses highschool friends. It was a lovely way to end the meal and everyone went crazy for it. I served it along with sliced oranges with a honey-rosemary (with a little water to thin it) drizzled sauce.

    I too wondered about the size pan and since I only had an 8″ pan, it looked like it was going to be too much dough, so I used an 8×8. I cooked it at 350, but I think 325 would be better for the glass as it got brown a little too quickly till the center was done.

    Anyway, thanks for the great, easy and delicious dessert. We see your Mom and Dad on Tuesday in NYC. It has been a long time…..

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    • Hello, Joan! I’m glad it turned out well. I’m starting to suspect that my oven is a little screwy – maybe it doesn’t quite reach the temperature it says it does!!
      Thank you so much for trying it, and I’m glad you were able to make it work using your own adjustments.

      Slice oranges with honey rosemary sounds absolutely delicious! I like anything with rosemary, but that sounds really special. We’ll have to try that!

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