Saturday 2 June 2012

No Boil Easy Whole Orange and Almond Cake

My eldest son, Liam, is nearly 4 now which for him seems soooooo old yet for me I still see my little boy and can't believe we have had him in our life for nearly 4 years now!  He surprises me all the time with things he says, the way he has thought about things and how he pieces different bits of information together to form his own ideas.  Its such a nice age to see them forming their own thoughts and perceptions.

So when we were thinking about what to cook the other day he said to me 'mum, what about we use the orange in the fruit bowl and whizz it up in the Thermomix to make a cake'?  'What a great idea' I said and my mind started ticking as to how I would make this idea of his work in a recipe.  Obviously there are many orange cakes around that use a whole orange but the whole notion of boiling it first for an hour didn't appeal to me and I knew the kids wouldn't have patience for it either!!



 I then remembered the Swiss Carrot Cake recipe from the Thermomix Gluten Free cookbook.  As you may remember I have adapted this recipe to make my Fudgy Chocolate Beetroot Cake so decided to try it out citrus style!!  And if the boys and I do say so ourselves, we have another success on our hands!  What I like about this recipe is that it uses the whole fruit (no waste and all the nutrients!) and minimal cooking (just the cake cooking time - not boiling the mickey out of the orange before it even touches the cake batter!!).

The original recipe calls for 300g carrots but when I weighed our single orange it was only 200g so Liam thought that a mix of orange and carrot would taste good (!!) so that's exactly what we did in this recipe - although if you happened to have enough oranges on hand then make it with 300g oranges.  As you can see this really is a recipe limited only by imagination.  Perhaps other combinations would appeal to you too - orange and lime (although I would then probably increase the sugar slightly to offset the sharpness of the whole lime), orange and pear, even orange and pumpkin would be an interesting combination - think pumpkin pie style!!

One more thing - if you don't have a Thermomix you really need a food processor or blender that can pulverize the orange enough to not have big chucks in the cake - although I guess if you chopped it enough with a knife you would eventually get a good enough result (and would have burned enough kilojoules to eat a slice guilt free!). 

No Boil Easy Whole Orange & Almond Cake

Ingredients

300g almonds (or almond meal if your processor of choice wont grind them into a meal)
200g sugar (if you are not using a Thermomix, use a finer sugar such as raw castor sugar or rapadura)
200g whole orange
100g carrot (grated if you are not using a Thermomix)
4 eggs (lightly beaten if not using a Thermomix)
80g cornflour (make sure this is gluten free if required)
1 tsp baking powder

Thermomix method

  1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius.  Lightly grease and line a spring form tin (I use 20cm).
  2. Place almonds and sugar into TM bowl and mill for 15 seconds on speed 10.  Set aside.
  3. Place oranges/carrots into TM bowl and chop for 8 seconds on speed 5. 
  4. Add almond/sugar mix, eggs, cornflour and baking powder and mix for 10 seconds on speed 7, using spatula if necessary.
  5. Pour the batter into prepared tin and bake for 40 minutes, using a skewer to make sure the cake is cooked.  It can seem slightly moist but still springing back in middle.
  6. Allow to cool for 10 minutes in the tin before turning out onto a cooling rack.
  7. Serve warm or cooled with ice cream or yogurt.

Conventional method

  1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius.  Lightly grease and line a spring form tin (I use 20cm).
  2. If you are milling the almonds, place in food processor and mill until a meal consistency is achieved.  Set aside.
  3. Chop oranges into quarters and place in food processor/stick blender and pulverize until a fine chop consistency.  If you are using a stick blender, just be careful as it may spurt out!  Perhaps place an old tea towel or the like around the opening of the container you use!!! 
  4. In a large bowl add the almond meal, sugar, orange, grated carrot, eggs, cornflour and baking powder and stir with a wooden spoon until thoroughly combined.
  5. Continue as per step 5 above.
Other ideas that come to mind are:
  • adding a tsp ground ginger to the mix would spice it up and pair nicely with the orange and carrot (and even the pumpkin if you went down that route!)
  • putting the mix into small greased dariole moulds (this qty would make quite a few) and steaming them until cooked through (either in the Thermomix or conventional methods).  Serve with a pomegranate syrup (pomegranate juice and sugar reduced down) or for something more decadent, a caramel/butterscotch sauce!!  Mmmmm

  

This was served with my homemade coconut ice cream (this recipe with fresh grated coconut stirred through!)

7 comments:

  1. Brooke Mezzetta4 June 2012 at 20:40

    I'm going to make this tomorrow night. Yummo

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  2. Yummy!! Just made this in my thermomix. Can't wait to make it again

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    1. Thanks so much for the feedback Amanda and I'm glad you loved it ( :

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    2. I've already had a request for it :) making it tomorrow

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  3. this is DELICIOUS! making it again tonight to go in lunches this week :)

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    1. Thanks for the feedback Danielle! Glad you enjoyed it!😀

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