Friday 7 November 2014

Orange cake

  Mister Chief is four now.  Far too grown up for my liking.  We had a conversation the other day about growing up.  He informed me that he was going to grow bigger and.

  That's how he said it, 

  "I'm going to grow bigger and".

  "And?" I said.  I expected him to say taller, or stronger, or something.

  "And bigger"  said he.

  "And?" I said.


  "And bigger"  said he.

  "And?" I said.


  "And bigger"  said he.

  "And?" I said.

  "And POP!!" he said happily.

  Still small and gorgeous then.  :-)
  


  A birthday party necessitates an extra special cake - but one that is pretty foolproof.  I made this cake for the first time and it worked out brilliantly.



Ingredients
1 thin-skinned orange (except I didn't have any oranges so I used three small "easy-peelers" instead, not sure if they were satsumas or clementines but they didn't have any pips)
275g self-raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
275g caster sugar (except I used normal granulated sugar 'cos that's what I've got)
275g butter/marge
4 eggs (I used 5 because three of them were small, one of our chickens has only just started laying)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground mixed spice (or nutmeg or something you like if you don't have mixed spice)


What to do

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4 (fan 160C).
Grease and line an 8in sandwich tin (or whatever cake tin you want to use) with non-stick baking paper. 

Place the whole orange (or satsumas) in a small saucepan, cover with boiling water and boil for 30 minutes, or until soft. Leave to cool. When the orange is cold, cut in half and remove any pips.  I actually didn't leave them to cool but held them carefully and cut them as quickly as possible to try not to burn my fingers.
Roughly chop the orange and blend, including the skin, in a food processor.
Cream together the sugar and butter, then add the eggs and mix well.  Add the blended orange.
Sieve in the flour, spices and baking powder and stir until it's all really well mixed and looks smooth.  Pour the cake mix into the prepared tin and bake in the pre-heated oven for about 30-40 minutes. 
Leave to cool for a couple of minutes and then transfer the cake to a wire rack to cool down properly, peel off the baking paper when it's cool enough to handle.





Then, when it's cooled, it's time to decorate!  I let Mister Chief go crazy with some pre-shaped icing decorations in the shape of vehicles.  I was probably fooling myself to think that there would be any left - of course he used both packets.  Why wouldn't he?  I also melted some chocolate and poured it into little heart moulds, so the cake was well and truly decorated!

I forgot to get a picture of the finished cake before it was cut, but managed to snap this pic before it was all scoffed.





  And it was really yummy!  I'm planning to make another cake like this for Christmas except maybe using more spices.  I'm not going to use raisins, currents or sultanas though - they are evil ex-fruit.