Heston Blumenthal may have had a whole orange at the centre of his Christmas pudding, but I’ve gone one better – one orange, that is! This moist and delicious cake has not one, but two whole oranges in it – zest, pith and all. While you might expect this to make the cake very bitter, it in fact gives it a wonderfully light and fresh flavour which balances the richness of the almonds.
But when you get down to it, my major reason for making this cake (other than to feed to my friends!) was to use up the other half of the paprika butter cream icing from my last post. I had stored this in the freezer, and wasn’t terribly sure whether it would thaw ok or not, but in fact it worked out just fine. I simply froze it in a small tub, and when I needed it I just defrosted it in the fridge over night, then took it out of the fridge for a couple of hours before icing the cake. To refresh the icing simply pop it in the blender with a couple of tablespoons of milk and blend until it regains a smooth and pliable consistency.
The cake recipe comes from the BBC food website.
Orange and Almond Cake
Ingredients
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2 large oranges
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1 tsp butter
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1 tsp plain flour
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6 free-range eggs
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250g/9oz ground almonds
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250g/9oz caster sugar
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1 tbsp baking powder
Preparation method
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Wash the oranges thoroughly. Bring them to the boil in a large saucepan of water and gently cook for two hours.
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Preheat the oven to 175C/325F/Gas 3 and butter and flour a 23cm/9in cake tin.
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Leave the oranges to cool, before slicing in quarters and removing the pips.
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Pulp the oranges in a food processor.
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Beat the eggs and gradually stir in all the remaining ingredients, including the orange pulp. Pour into the cake tin and cook for about an hour, until the cake is golden in colour and has risen.
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Transfer to a wire cooling rack, keeping the cake in the tin. When the cake has cooled, carefully remove from the tin and serve cut into slices.
Ingredients For the Icing:
- 125g butter (room temp)
- 250g powdered sugar
- 0.5 tsp vanilla
- 1 tsp sweet paprika, 1tsp smoked paprika
- ½ tsp each: salt, black pepper
Whip butter on high for 5 minutes. Scrape sides and repeat. Add powdered sugar a cup at a time with mixer on speed 1. Add milk, vanilla, and spices. Whip on speed 3 to incorporate everything fully. Spread the icing over the top of the cake and decorate as pleases you, chill to set the icing