Chocolate and Orange Cake

I wanted to make a sandwich cake for OH's birthday, but also wanted it to look a bit different. Had a large orange to use up, so decided to use it in the cake and to decorate it.  Recently I saw a tv chef add a flake bar to a chocolate cake, so thought I'd try the same, instead of using cocoa or melted chocolate.

Cake:
225sr flour
175g soft butter
175g caster sugar
grated rind of a large orange
3 eggs
2 crushed Flake bars
4 tbspn milk

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Walnut and Orange Cake

This is a nice easy, healthy cake made using a food processor.


I love Claudia Roden's orange cake with whole cooked oranges, but this recipe uses a whole orange, chopped up and not cooked.
We're trying to eat less and lose a bit of weight. I know eating any cake won't help, but at least this one has oil instead of butter and  is a healthier option [or IS it? I'm confused by all the research on butter, oils and fats]
You need a thin skinned orange, a navel if possible, as it has little bitter pith and no seeds - I found some in my local supermarket which were fine. They were sold singly, not in a net.

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Orange and Almond Cake

My friend came for tea yesterday and she loves anything with almonds, so I made this cake for her. It's simple but delicious. The recipe comes from my friend who has the little cake shop, so has been well tested!


240g ground almonds
120g caster sugar
6 eggs
50g of plain flour
the juice of 2 medium oranges
zest of 1 of the oranges
1 tspn baking powder
pinch of salt
20g butter
icing sugar to decorate

Preheat oven 180C/gas4
Grease a 23cm springform tin well, and line the base.

Mix the flour and baking powder together in a large bowl.
Separate the egg yolks and whites, then beat the yolks with the caster sugar until white and fluffy. Gently fold in the flour.
Add a pinch of salt to the whites then beat them into stiff peaks with a beater.
Add the ground almonds to the batter mixture and stir in gently, then pour in the orange juice and zest.
Add the egg whites little by little very gently till it's all mixed in, trying to keep the air in the whites.
Spoon into the tin then bake for about 50 mins till golden. Cool on a wire rack.

As you can see, I used a stencil to make a pattern on the top with icing sugar. This just made it look a bit more festive. The cake has a lovely almond flavour, complimented by the orange. It has quite a firm texture from the ground almonds, and the oranges make it a lovely moist cake.

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Orange cake with marmalade and orange flower cream

There are several very similar recipes for this cake - Nigella has one, Claudia Roden has one and I'm sure there are many more. This one comes from Diana Henry in her lovely book 'Crazy Water Pickled Lemons.'
I love Moroccan food and there are some great recipes in this book.

A good tip I've learnt from a cyber friend is that instead of boiling the orange for an hour as stipulated in the recipe, you can cook it in the microwave and speed up the whole process. You prick the skin of the orange and microwave it on high for about 8 minutes, turning the orange around after a few minutes, just as you would a potato. Saves a lot of time and energy.

cake:
1 orange
3 eggs
250g caster sugar
55g plain flour
1tsp baking powder
200g ground almonds
icing sugar for dusting

for the cream:
55g fine-shred orange marmalade
125g  mascarpone cheese
30ml (2 tbsp) Greek yoghurt
icing sugar to taste
5ml (1 tsp) orange flower water


Preheat oven to 180˚C (350˚F) Gas Mark 4
Grease a 20cm (8in) spring-form tin and line with greaseproof paper.
Put the orange in a saucepan, cover with water and simmer for an hour. Cut the orange in half, remove the pips, and purée the rest of the fruit in a food processor. Beat the eggs and sugar together until they’re pale and thick. Fold in the flour, baking powder, almonds and orange purée. Pour into the tin and bake for about an hour. Cool on a wire rack.
To make the cream, melt the marmalade in a small pan. Let it cool slightly, but don’t let it set, then mix it with the mascarpone and yoghurt. Add icing sugar to taste and the orange flower water.

Sift icing sugar over the cake and serve with the marmalade cream.

This is the cake without the marmalade cream.  I love the texture of it - light, moist and full of orange flavour. The marmalade cream is great, but I prefer to just eat the cake just as it is - unadorned and simple.

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Orange and cinnamon thins

My younger daughter is coming today, so I thought I'd make her some biscuits with her favourite flavour, orange. I love cinnamon, so this seemed the perfect one to try.
The recipe comes from a free booklet in a 'Woman's Weekly' magazine a few years back, but I've changed it slightly to give the thins a more orange flavour.

Makes about 30 thins

225g butter
140g caster sugar
grated zest of an orange
1 egg yolk
4 tspns orange juice
280g plain flour
2 tspn cinnamon
pinch salt

Put the butter, sugar and orange rind in a bowl and beat till creamy. Beat in the egg yolk and 2 tspns of the orange juice. Add the salt to the flour and then stir into the mixture till it's all nicely blended.
Make into a ball, wrap in film and chill for about an hour.
Take it out, unwrap and roll dough out between 2 sheets of baking parchment  into a 30 cm square.
Take off top sheet and brush the dough with the rest of the orange juice and sprinkle over the cinnamon. Lightly roll it, then roll it up like a swiss roll.
Wrap in film and chill for 30 mins.

Preheat oven 190C/gas 5 and line 2 baking trays with baking parchment.

Unwrap the dough and cut into thin slices with a sharp knife.
Space put well on the baking trays and bake for 10-12 mins.
Cool on the trays for 5 mins or so, then put onto a wire rack using a palette knife.

So you can see that I didn't manage to roll them up like a swiss roll! The dough was very hard to handle, even with baking parchment, and when I rolled it up, it stayed rather flat. I'd left it in the fridge for 30 mins, maybe I should have left it longer.You can just about see a swiss roll-ish shape in the biscuit on the left. They taste very good.
I added a tspn of orange extract to the dough instead of 1 of the 2 tspns of orange juice, and I used a large orange, giving more zest.This gave the thins a good orange flavour.
Would I make them again - I don't think so.

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Orange teabread

Another teabread to add to my collection - a Scandinavian one, or so I thought when I saw the name of the recipe, but it's more of a loaf cake .This comes from a book on baking I bought from a charity shop a while ago - it doesn't have an author - it's just called 'The Baking manual'.

150g butter
120g sugar
3 eggs
grated rind of 2 lemons
60ml orange juice
250g plain flour + 2 tspns baking powder
breadcrumbs to coat the tin
Fat to grease the cake tin.

You don't preheat the oven for this recipe - you put the cake mixture into a cold oven.
Grease a 900g loaf tin.

Beat the butter and sugar together till pale then add the eggs, one at a time, beating between each one.
Mix in the lemon rind, orange juice and the flour.
You sprinkle the breadcrumbs into the greased tin [ I didn't do this as I didn't want wholemeal crumbs around the cake]. The recipe didn't give an amount and I can't see any crumbs on the cake photo in the book. Seems a strange addition.
Pour the mixture into the tin and put into a cold oven then turn the oven onto 180C/gas 4.  Bake for about 45 mins.
The recipe says to turn the cake out and leave to cool under the upturned tin - not sure why?

It's a light, airy cake with a nice citrus flavour. You could ice it with an orange flavoured icing, but I kept it plain. It's good with a cup of tea, but I think it would make a nice dessert, with the addition of some fruit.

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Cranberry & Orange Mincemeat

Homemade mincemeat knocks the socks off anything you can buy in the shops.  Fact.  Luckily for me, in the past I've been gifted lovingly made jars of the stuff by friends and family.  But this year as December approached the cupboards were bare.

So I set off in search of a recipe.  The sort of tried and tested one that can't go wrong (but that I would inevitably end up playing around with because I can't help myself).  I thought Delia might hold the key, but melted suet?  What's that all about?  Not for me. 

Whenever I need what I'd refer to as a staple recipe (you know, things like simnel cake, shortbread, lemon curd...) to work from there is a handful of food blogs I tend to turn to. One of them is Gin and Crumpets written by fellow South East London dweller, Jassy.  She writes recipes that work and ones that I want to cook. 

Armed with her wonderful recipe for Apple & Lemon Mincemeat (and some advice along the way) I set about creating my own vat of mincemeat.  For that is what I made, a rather large quantity of mincemeat to see me through the festive season.  I haven't put mine into jars as I reckon it won't be in existence any longer than a couple of weeks, so it's currently residing in a large tupperware in my cupboard.  But you could of course sterilise some jars to store it in or to give away as gifts.

Ingredients

1.2kg mixture of sultanas and raisins (I used Waitrose vine fruit mix)
300g dried cranberries
500g bramley apples (peeled & cored weight - approx 5 medium apples)
300g vegetarian suet
300g golden caster sugar
zest & juice of 3 oranges
zest & juice of 1 unwaxed lemon
200ml brandy
1.5 tsp ground mixed spice
1.5 tsp ground cinnamon

Method

Put the lemon and orange zest in a bowl, cover with boiling water and leave for half an hour.  This will help extract any bitterness.  I use a zester to remove long strips of zest, but if you haven't got one you can either grate the zest using a fine grater or pare the zest with a peeler (taking care not to take too much of the white pith which is bitter).

Mix the dried fruit (sultanas, raisins and cranberries) in a large bowl and pick over to get rid of any stems . 

Drain the lemon and orange zest and chop.  Stir the zest and all of the orange and lemon juice into the dried fruit.

Peel, core and coarsely grate the apples.  Add the grated apples, vegetable suet, sugar, brandy and spices to the dried fruit mixture and stir to mix thoroughly.  The apples go brown pretty quickly when peeled, so I did a few at a time, adding them to the dried fruits as I went along so that the lemon juice prevent them from going brown. 

Leave to stand for a few hours, covered with a tea towel, returning to stir the mincemeat regularly.

If you are just making the mincemeat to use over a couple of weeks then it will keep perfectly well sealed in a plastic container.  If you want to store it in jars to keep it for longer, then fill sterilised jars, seal and store in a cool dark place.

Use to make mince pies.

Huge thanks to Jassy of Gin and Crumpets for her mincemeat guidance.

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Grandpa Urchin's Tunisian Orange Cake

For my third cake this week I chose to make this deliciously sticky, sweet Tunisian Orange Cake which I (along with many others) fawned over when we tasted it at fellow blogger, Food Urchin's lamb in a pit extravaganza last summer. Sadly for poor Food Urchin, despite his best efforts to wow us all with his amazing-cooked-in-the-ground-for-10-hours lamb, it was his Dad's cake which stole the show.

So here is the recipe, reproduced with the kind permission of Food Urchin and Grandpa Urchin, for the most moist, sticky, orangey, lightly spiced cake you e'er will taste on these shores...

Ingredients

For the cake:

50g slightly stale white breadcrumbs
200g caster sugar
100g ground almonds
1 ½ tsp baking powder
200ml sunflower oil
4 eggs
finely grated zest of 1 large unwaxed orange
finely grated zest of ½ unwaxed lemon

For the citrus syrup:

juice of 1 orange
juice of 1 lemon
75g caster sugar
2 cloves
1 cinnamon stick

For the icing (optional):

The original recipe doesn't have icing, but I wanted to 'posh it up' a bit on this occasion. It really isn't necessary and you could just serve it as it is or with a dollop of yogurt or fresh cream.

2 tbsp freshly squeezed orange juice
125-150g icing sugar
zest of ½ unwaxed orange

Method

Line the base of a 20cm round and 5cm deep tine with greaseproof paper, then grease and flour the tin.

Mix the breadcrumbs with the sugar, almonds and baking powder. Whisk the oil with the eggs, then pour into the dry ingredients and then mix well. Add the orange and lemon zest. Pour the mixture into the tin, place in a cold oven and turn on the heat to 180C.

Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour or until the cake is golden brown (mine took 45 minutes). Check with a skewer by inserting it into the middle, if it comes out clean it’s done. Cool for 5 minutes before turning out onto a plate.

Meanwhile, make the citrus syrup. Put all the ingredients into a saucepan and bring gently to the boil, stirring until the sugar has completely dissolved. Simmer for 3 minutes. Remove the cinnamon stick and cloves from the syrup.

While the cake is still warm, pierce it several times with a skewer, then spoon the hot syrup over the cake allowing it to run into the holes. Leave to cool. Spoon any excess syrup over the cake every now and then until it is all soaked up.

To make the icing, sift the icing sugar into the orange juice and zest and stir until smooth. Drizzle across the cake.

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