This Almond Cake with Amaretto Filling is an almond lover’s dream. It’s covered in an incredible almond buttercream. This cake takes a little time to prepare but it is worthy of a special occasion. It makes a fabulous wedding cake.
Hello and welcome to SpicySouthernKitchen.com. My name is Christin and I love food. Spicy foods and southern foods are my favorites. I love to try new things in the kitchen and it’s really not an exaggeration to say that I hardly ever cook the same thing twice.
Since it’s Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d share an extra-indulgent recipe- Almond Cake with Amaretto Filling. This has to be one of my favorite cakes ever. It has a wonderful almond flavor in the filling, the frosting, and the cake itself. It’s the almond lover’s trifecta. This cake is perfect for any special occasion whether it be Valentine’s Day, Christmas, a birthday, or even a wedding. My husband and I had an almond-flavored cake for our wedding. I still think about it almost 17 years later.
This is a recipe that was published in Taste of the South Magazine which is one of my favorite magazine’s for recipes. But sometimes their recipes can be hit or miss and they don’t always have the best directions. I was pleased to find that this recipe turned out exceptionally well, which is good because I put a large amount of time and energy into it.
I was a little uncertain about making the almond cream beacause after soaking the almonds in the 2 cups of heavy cream, I ended up with a lot less then 2 cups of almond cream, even after pressing the heck out of the almonds in the strainer. But the recipe doesn’t say how much you should end up with. I was worried I had too little and that I’d end up with a dry cake. I fugured I’d rather ere on the side of having too much liquid ingredients rather than too little, so I added in about another 1/4 cup of heavy cream. Because after all, how can you have too much heavy cream?
I was also a little afraid that my filling would not turn out because my gelatin didn’t seem to disslove very well. But it has heavenly. I would have been perfectly happy to forget the cake layers and just sit down on the couch with a spoon and the bowl of amarreto filling.
Almond Cake with Amaretto Filling
Ingredients
- 2 cups heavy whipping cream
- 2 cups sliced almonds, toasted
- 3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
- 2 1/4 cups sugar
- 6 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon almond extract
- 3 1/2 cups cake flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
Amaretto Filling
- 2 cups heavy whipping cream, divided
- 1/2 cup amaretto liqueur
- 1 (.25ounce) package unflavored gelatin
- 1/4 cup sugar
Almond Buttercream Icing
- 1 1/2 cups unsalted butter, softened
- 4 cups confectioners’ sugar
- 1/4 cup reserved almond cream
- 1 tablespoon amaretto liqueur
- 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray 3 (9-inch) round cake pans with nonstick baking spray with flour. (Or butter and flour each pan.)
- In a large saucepan, bring cream to a simmer over medium heat. Add almonds to hot cream and remove from heat. Let stand 30 minutes. Strain almond mixture and reserve cream. (Really press down on almonds with a rubber spatula or back of a spoon to get as much liquid out as possible.) Place 1/4 cup of the almond cream in a small bowl to reserve for icing.
- In a large bowl, beat butter with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until creamy. Add sugar and beat well. One at a time, add the eggs, stopping to scrape down sides of bowl periodically. Add extracts and beat to incorporate.
- In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. Gradually add flour mixture to butter mixture, alternating with remaining almond cream, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Beat until combined and divide batter evenly among the 3 pans.
- Bake until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean, 23 to 26 minutes. Let cool in pans 5 minutes and remove cakes from pans and let cool entirely on a wire rack.
- Make Amaretto Filling. In a small saucepan, combine 1/2 cup cream and amaretto liqueur. Bring to a simmer over medium heat. Remove from heat. Add gelatin to cream mixture, stirring until dissolved. Refrigerate for approximately 30 minutes. Mixture should be firm, but not set.
- In a large bowl, beat remaining 1 1/2 cups cream at high speed with an electric mixer until stiff peaks form. Add sugar and chilled gelatin mixture and beat well. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
- Beat for 2 minutes on medium-high speed and then spread between cake layers.
- Make Buttercream Icing. In a large bowl, beat butter at medium-high speed until creamy.
- Gradually add in confectioners’ sugar. Add almond cream and beat well. Add amaretto and extract.
- Spread Amaretto Filling between layers and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
- Spread icing on top and sides of cake. Store cake in refrigerator.
Notes
2 cups are used to make the almond cream. The almond cream is then divided and 1/4 cup is reserved for the Buttercream Icing and the rest is added to the cake batter.
A separate 2 cups of cream is used to make the Amaretto filling.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
More Almond Desserts
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This cake was amazing. Made for my mothers birthday a few weeks ago and it melted in the mouth. Just about to start making another one for tonight’s diner with some neighbours..many thanks for sharing this recipe
So glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for letting me know. I can’t think of a better flavor for birthday cake than almond. Happy belated birthday to your mother.
Hello! I realize this is older but I’m hoping you can help me trouble shoot the filling…. I’m making this as a very simple wedding cake for my sister. The cake itself turned out great! The filling however… I’ve made it three times and it has failed each time… The first time was my fault. I totally forgot about the gelatin mixture and it was very set. The second time I beat the whipping cream a little too much and it was too thick before I combined the gelatin.
The third time I have no idea. The whipping cream looked good, the gelatin was not quite set… I mixed it together and it looked awesome. But after refrigerating it for an hour and then beating it again, it was extremely clumpy and goopy… It almost seemed like it was melting. I will say that I’m trying to make it alcohol free and flowed the suggestions below for adding an extra 1/4 cup of cream and I did 1 tsp amaretto emulsion and 1 tsp vanilla instead of amaretto. I’m not sure what to do?
Hi there- I realize this is an older post, but this recipe sounds delicious and I’d like to use it to make a simple wedding cake. Is the icing a crusting buttercream icing? Or is it soft? The bride wants rose swirls all around the outside of the cake and I’m worried that a soft icing wont hold its shape. Thanks!
Oh gosh, you’ve really got me on that! It’s been a year and a half since I’ve made it so I’m trying to remember what the consistency was. I would say that it is soft. I stored it in the refrigerator so it was pretty firm, but if it was left out at room temperature for a long time it would probably soften up quite a bit.
Alrighty! Thank you for getting back to me so quickly! I’ll just substitute my regular frosting and use almond extract and amaretto coffee creamer instead of the usual vanilla and milk. So excited about this cake! Thanks so much for the recipe! 🙂
Hope you enjoy it Meagan!
I am wanting to make this cake for someone, but it can’t have alcohol in it. Is it possible to substitute ammaretto extract for the liqueur? Any idea how much to use, our how to account for the rest of the liquid since the extract would be significantly less than the liquer? Thanks in advance!
Do you mean almond extract? You could definitely leave the amaretto out of the frosting and add a touch more almond extract. For the filling, I would use 1/2-1 teaspoon of almond extract and extra cream or milk to make up for the liquid. Most almond extracts do have alcohol in them though and some are 80% alcohol which is a higher concentration than in the amaretto. Of course you are using much less. And I think a few companies do make alcohol-free extracts.
Hope you enjoy the cake!
I need to triple this recipe. Does that mean I need to triple my almonds or can the same amount be used in triple the cream?
I think I would triple the almonds just to be sure.
When I drained the soaked almonds I was only able to extract 1 cup of heavy cream. did i do something wrong? My cake came out very dry, I’m sure it’s because i didn’t have enough cream. any recommendations?
Sorry your cake came out dry 🙁 Read through the post before the recipe and you’ll see I was worried about not having extracted enough liquid so I added some extra heavy cream. That should work.
Hi this maybe a dumb question, but what is almond cream?
Hi, I don’t know of this is a dumb question, but what is reserved almond cream?
It’s the cream that you soak the almonds in.
Could you add maybe a cup of sour cream instead of the extra heavy cream after you soak the almonds?
Hmmm… I can’t promise it would work, but I would tend to think sour cream would be a pretty good substitute for the heavy cream. Let me know if you try it.
just curious if you could use almond milk instead of the heavy cream/almonds??
Hmmm. Not really sure. Almond milk is much thinner than heavy cream, so I’m sure it would change the texture of the cake and since it lacks the fat of heavy cream, I would think the taste would be different too. Whether or not it would still be good, I don’t know.