Citrus Butter Cake

This cake is a sweet celebration of all citrus in season and a celebration of things starting to return to normal, whatever that is now.  Beautiful orange navels, juicy limes, and tangy lemons found their way into my shopping basket, and the cake I needed to make just had to be a citrus one.

Orange Yoghurt Cake, Simply Sweet

Do you feel like whipping up a delicious cake for afternoon tea today, after all it is Sunday. I always feel that if there is any day you can justify indulging in morning or afternoon tea with cake, it's today. This is a traditional kind of cake, but with the addition of yoghurt and beaten egg whites, and topped off with delicious orange flavoured icing and grated orange zest. With all of the citrus around, and oranges in my fruit bowl, my choice of cake had to be orange. The yoghurt and egg whites give this cake a very light but firm texture and it will keep fresh in your cake tin for a few days, if you can hide it that is. In my house, cake never lasts long, but it's really nice to know it is there to offer our friends who might just call in for a cuppa.




I know I just said that Sunday is a perfect day for cake for afternoon tea, however I made this cake for last Tuesday afternoon when our weekly Mahjong "tournament" was being held at my place. We take turns in each others homes. So Chris, Marj, Jill, and Lou all arrived for Mahjong, we played a couple of games and then Mr. HRK my resident barista did his thing and made us all perfect flat white espresso coffees, with a little coffee art added as well, which went beautifully with the orange cake. Nobody wants tea when he makes coffee. Neil roasts the imported coffee beans himself at least once every week, and then using our Rancilio coffee machine, he  makes a very nice coffee. However he does say that it is really the Italian Coffee Grinder that makes the difference. I am very lucky, as each morning I am treated to a great coffee here at home. We rarely go out just for coffee here in Mackay, unless I occasionally meet a friend for a catchup. It certainly saves a lot of money and honestly I think that there are a lot of coffee shops around now serving very average coffee. Do you go out for coffee much my friends, or do you prefer to have it at home as well?




Orange Cake recipe

Ingredients:

125 g butter
1 good tablespoon grated orange rind
1 cup castor sugar
3 eggs, separated
2 cups self raising flour
1/4 cup orange juice
1 cup plain yoghurt

ORANGE ICING

1 1/2 cups icing sugar
30g softened butter
2 tablespoons orange juice, or a little more if needed

 Let's cook:

Grease a 14cm x 21cm loaf pan, line the base and the sides with baking paper. Grease the paper well.

Cream the butter, the orange rind and the sugar in a small bowl with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. ( I have a small portable mixer just for this kind of job. My kitchen aid bowl is too large to mix this quantity. )

Beat in the egg yolks one at a time.

Meanwhile mix together the orange juice and the yoghurt in a separate small bowl.

Transfer the butter, sugar and egg mixture to a large mixing bowl and stir in by hand half the sifted flour and half the orange juice and yoghurt which you have mixed together. Stir in the remaining flour and yoghurt mixture.

Beat the egg whites in a clean and dry small bowl until soft peaks form. This won't take long at all at a high speed. Fold lightly into the cake mixture in two lots.

Pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin.

Bake in a slow oven (150 deg. C.) or (300 deg F.) for 75 minutes, and test it with a skewer to see if it is cooked.

Stand for 5 minutes before turning onto a wire rack to cool. Spread the cold cake with icing.




Orange icing:

Combine the sifted icing sugar and butter in a medium sized bowl. Stir in enough juice to mix the icing to a spreadable consistency. If it is too moist, add a little more icing sugar until it is a spreadable consistency. Remember the cake must be cold before you spread the icing onto it or it will all slide off.





Have a great Sunday wherever you are.

Best wishes,

Pauline

xxx

Chicken Traybake with Fennel, Orange and Lemon

This Chicken Traybake recipe has been so quick and easy to prepare, and Fennel is a great vegetable to work with and enjoy, so crisp, tasty and aromatic. Fennel also maintains its integrity when it is cooked, retaining it's shape and texture, and not becoming mushy. I think I might have said once or twice before how much I like traybakes as a style of cooking. On a wet and cold day, this has been a comforting dish to have cooking in the oven, with the aroma in the kitchen promising a delicious and fulfilling meal to come.

Orange Cake for a birthday Afternoon tea

 Whole Orange Cake

I love a flavoursome orange cake in Summer and when I saw this recipe I decided to make it for myself on my birthday. Such a treat. It is so easy, as there is no zesting, juicing or peeling involved, the washed orange is just mulched up in the food processor and if you have an orange in your fruit basket, and enjoy baking there is a very strong chance that you will also have all of the other ingredients on hand. I am finding that using plain flour and baking powder gives better results than using S.R. flour.

As you can tell by the rich yellow colour, it is full of orange flavour and the taste of summer. I also had some beautiful organic eggs that a friend gave me which were laid by her chickens. Lemon icing provides a wonderful tart contrast to the sweetness of this cake.

I am calling my cake Orange Sunshine.

Find the original recipe here:

INGREDIENTS:

1 whole orange (organic if possible)
3 eggs
180 g melted butter (6.3 oz)
1 cup white sugar (or you can substitute with 3/4 cup of dextrose if you are avoiding sugar)
1 1/2 cups Self Raising Flour or (1 1/2 cups Plain Flour sifted with 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder)

Let's Cook:

• Preheat your oven to 180 C/350 F.
• Grease a 20 cm round spring form cake tin or a small loaf or bar tin.
• Wash your orange carefully if bought from a supermarket, however if it is organic or from your backyard tree this is not as important.
• Cut the orange into quarters, and place the pieces into your food processor. Pulse until the pieces are completely broken down. You may need to use a spatula to wipe down the side of the bowl and the lid a couple of times during this process.
• Add the rest of the ingredients and process again until all the ingredients are combined together, about 50 seconds.
• Scrape the batter with the spatula into the cake tin and cook for around 40 minutes. When I used the loaf tin it took about 50 minutes to completely cook.
• This cake also bakes very well in a loaf tin.

Your cake will be moist and delicious with a wonderful orange flavour. 

Whenever I combine Oranges and Lemons together it reminds me of the singing game we used to play as kids, where we would all hold hands and form an arch and sing the song Oranges and Lemons until one person was left standing and met an unfortunate end. A bit gruesome but as kids it was just great fun, and of course we didn't think about the history or the meaning of the words. As we didn't with the also gruesome fairy tales.  It was based on the traditional English nursery rhyme and singing game which referred to the bells of several churches, all close to or within the City of London. How appropriate that I am also writing this on a Sunday, speaking of church bells ringing that is.

Oranges and lemons 

Say the bells of St Clement's

You owe me five farthings

Say the bells of St. Martin's

Last verse:

Here comes a candle to light you to bed,

And here comes a chopper to chop off your head!

Chip chop chip chop the last man is dead.

I'm sure that back then we didn't sing all of the verses but we always enjoyed singing the last verse where somebody dropped to the ground. They were innocent days back then. We took great delight in catching the last person in our arch and they were out of the game.

Do you remember playing this game as children and do children still play it?

Thanks for dropping by.

Warm wishes

Pauline x

Orange and Fennel infused Chicken Traybake

Mediterranean Fennel is a vegetable that I should be using more in my cooking and my salads because it is so healthy and delicious. There are some really nice and reasonably priced small fennel bulbs available at the supermarkets at the moment, even though in the Mediterranean where it originates from since ancient times it is a Winter season vegetable. It is the perfect vegetable to partner with chicken in a traybake as it is very low-calorie, has a sweet anise-like flavour and contains lots of fibre.

Moroccan Orange Blossom and Cardamon Yoghurt Cake

Moroccan Orange Blossom and Cardamon Yoghurt Cake

Jump to the recipe here:

This is a festive cake combining some favourite aromatic spices, with orange blossom water, and pomegranates. It tastes so amazingly good, that I am tempted to change years of tradition at Christmas, and replace my fruit cake with this light and exotic taste sensation. It even looks like a Christmas cake, with the visual appeal of the pomegranates  and the explosion of taste that they deliver. 

I am babysitting a friends little boy today so this is being written in a bit of a hurry, while he sleeps. Believe me though, this is a cake well worthy trying.

This recipe requires a 2L (25cm)  bundt cake pan and Serves 6.

No electric mixer is required for this recipe just a whisk, a mixing spoon and a large bowl.

Middle Eastern Orange and Almond Cake with Orange Syrup and Mint Sugar

Oranges were bountiful this winter, and we are very fortunate to have access to a beautiful orange tree. Now that I am retired, I have time to freeze the oranges and use later in cakes, desserts etc. Oranges freeze very well.