Sunshine Whole Orange & almond cake with lemon curd

This is the kind of cake that I like. It’s not all fussed up with cream and decoration, it uses entire fruit skin and all, it is not over-sweet, it uses nuts in place of flour, it improves after a couple of days – in short it is more than the sum of its parts. The cake recipe is adapted from a Claudia Roden recipe for a Sephardic Jewish orange cake and wows with its bitter orange/marmalade taste and for sensitive souls it happens to be gluten free too.

I add polenta for a bit of crunch and the juice the oranges were cooked in. I also adapted the method a little to make a lighter cake so I make a “mousse” or foam with eggs and sugar as if making a genoise. It lends itself well to all kinds of improvs and ideas – in the picture above I added fennel seeds to the mix, decorated with some confit lemon and lime (I ran out of lemons) and sandwiched with a lemon curd.

In Greece I have made it with “mastika” crystals (the incense like flavour I love). Its fabulous with saffron, great with crushed coriander seeds and it marries well with a chocolate ganache. I’ve also added half cocoa in place of polenta to create a gorgeous moist chocolate orange cake.

Nerdy Stuff

Before the “How To”, a quick word on quantities and a quick math lesson. When assessing recipes and wondering if your battered old cake tin will accommodate the cake mix, whip out your calculator/ flex your excel skills! The recipe below is for a 20 cm circular tin… Say the sides are 4cm (and this is a mousse cake method so it will not rise on cooking)…we need the volume, so first the base area ..that’s pi x radius squared ie 3.142x10x10 = 314 cm squared. And now the volume …multiply by the height…so we have 314x 4 = 1257 cm cubed of cake mix. So if you had a square tin that was 18cm x 18cm x 4cm that would give you a volume of 1296 cm cubed and work out fine.

INGREDIENTS for a circular 20cm cake tin

1 orange plus the juice it was boiled in (I’ve sometimes boiled them dry and when that happens as long as you haven’t cremated the thing its fine to add a little boiled water – approx 100ml)

3 Eggs

125g Ground almonds (I blitz them in a blender and I often use almonds with the skins on)

65g polenta (“malai”) or 35g cocoa powder/ 30g polenta if making the chocolate version

120g Sugar (I have used 100ml honey or agave syrup but you need to increase the almonds a little as this is quite a liquid mix to begin with)

HOW TO

Wash and boil the orange unpeeled, in water to cover for 1 hour or until it is very soft. Let cool then cut open, remove the pips and turn into a puree in a food processor adding the water that is left from the cooking pan – approx. 100ml of cooking juice.

Beat the eggs and sugar in a large bowl until they are foamy. Really do keep whisking until they leave a trail from the beater.

Fold in carefully, so as to just amalgamate the ingredients but not knock out all the air from the mixture. Pour into a cake tin with a removable base that you have buttered or oiled.

Bake in a preheated moderately hot 160C convection/ 180C non convection oven for about 1 hour. Check by inserting a skewer – it should come out clean. If it is still very wet, leave it in the oven for a little longer. Cool in the tin before turning out. (I once was in a hurry and turned it out when it was still hot, burnt my fingers and dropped the entire creation on the floor…so please people! “do as I say not as I do.”)

Improvs and Ideas

It does make great small cakes and cup cakes. I am sure a lemon version needs to be created and I am toying with a pink grapefruit idea.

To confit some lemons just slice them relatively finely and cover with half sugar and half water. Bring to the boil and then simmer on the minimum heat very very slowly until they are cooked, soft and have a translucent quality about them indicated that they have absorbed the syrup.

New York via Bucharest Baked Cheesecake

What is so quintessentially New York is of course good old immigrant fare. Cooking desserts with sweet cheese is part of all European sweet cooking – from Polish cheesecake (“Sernik”) to Romanian sweet cheese doughnuts (“Papanasi”) or sweet cheese pie (“Placinta de branza”) to Hungarian dill flavoured cheesecake (“Kapros (dill) Turos (curd cheese) Lepeny“) to Slovenian “prekmurska Gibanica” and more….. every country, every region, every household has a recipe.

So I thought it was a bit daft making something so rooted in the region with imported “Philadelphia” cheese and besides I think it makes a heavier cheesecake than I like. Another thing I dont like is cheesecakes made with biscuit bases – why on earth go to the trouble of making a beautiful natural filling only to make a base full of hydrogenated fats and god knows what chemicals? So after a bit of tweaking and experimenting here is my recipe that works with local Romanian ingredients and uses your basic crumble mix with an egg yolk as the base – simple simple simple! Keep your crumble mix in bags in the freezer and you can knock up a cheesecake in 15 minutes flat. The Gluten Free base also is my GF crumble mix with an egg added so again easy and simple and no long difficult recipes just a few basic techniques linked together to create dishes.

Ingredients for quite a substantial (8-12 servings) Cheesecake in a 23cm springform tin or 6 x 10cm mini cheesecakes which are very cute

150-175g crumble mix + 1 egg yolk mixed in (it will still be crumbly but the crumbs will stick together with the egg yolk when you press into the tin)

4 eggs

175g sugar or 120g agave nectar/honey

zest of 1 lemon

500g sour cream 30% fat content

500g “branza dulce” ie fresh sweet cheese

1 tbsp cornflour – but not essential

Gadgets & Gizmos

Yes its true a springform cake tin really does help. If you line very well a normal tin then you can juggle with the cake when it is VERY cold ie one whole day after and flip it onto a plate and then flip it back over again. i did actually recently do this when, alarmingly, I had all my springforms in use and I had an order for a cheesecake! It worked but its a tiny bit nerve wracking!

How to

A small trick…take a square of baking paper and place over the base of your tin BEFORE locking on the spring part with the clasp. This really helps the cheesecake exit gracefully. I also line the tin with a little baking paper and oil again you dont have to but it makes life easier at the end.

Press the crumble and egg mixture into the base (ie on top of the paper) and bake at 180C for 8-10minutes. leave the oven on as the filling is so easy to make the whole thing will be back in the oven in 10 minutes.

Mix gently until just incorporated, the eggs, cream, sweet cheese, sugar and lemon zest. If you want to add a little cornflour this will stop the cake “weeping” and I personally quite like it. however if you have a sensitive palate you might just detect something a little “floury” in the texture. up to you. Combine the cornflour with 1 tbsp milk and add the milk/cornflour mixture.

Pour the mixture on top of the base and place in the oven for 30-40minutes. Its important that the centre still has a little wobble when you take it out. The cake will carry on cooking and will set after you take it out of the oven but if you wait until the centre is also absolutely solid then the final result will be a bit too dry. it will inflate quite a bit and then as it cooks deflate…

Try to refrigerate over night and eat the next day as it will taste better and slice easier. I personally like it with a raspberry coulis.

Lemon Grass, Ginger & Date & Barberry (“Agrise”) Fruitcake

This is a moist, highly flavoured fruit cake that happens to be vegan and happens to contain no added pure sugar. It is loosely based on my grandmother’s wartime fruitcake recipe when eggs were hard to come by and just about anything went in to the cake – apple chunks, dried plums and even rosehips! It freezes brilliantly and doubles up as an energy bar if you cut it into slices and store individually. I dont often use recipes with cups but this one seems to work really well.

Ingredients (feel free to change the mix according to what your store cupboard yields)

2 cups mixed dried fruit ( I like apricots, prunes, sultanas and “agrise”/ barberries

1 cup chopped dates covered with boiling water and a pinch of bicarbonate and pureed OR 1 cup of unsweetened apples sauce (I like the dark colour the dates give but apple sauce is faster and easier)

½ cup of crystallised ginger

1 stick of fresh lemongrass chopped very finely or dried lemongrass blitzed

1 tsp mixed spice

¼ tsp ground cloves

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp cardamon seeds ground

2 cups water

1 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil (it wont be bad if you use sunflower oil or any other oil as long as its good quality)

2 cups grated carrot

4 cups wholemeal flour

1 cup of ground almonds (I blitz almonds or any other nuts lurking around until a medium fine powder)

20g baking powder

1 tsp vinegar

Gadgets & Gizmos

I like fruitcakes in little loaf tins but any cake tin will do – just be careful to line with baking paper and oil so the cake eases out rather than you needing a pneumatic drill to prize it off the sides of the poor tin.

Method

An embarrasing lack of method here. OK the date puree needs a little work but after that simply combine all ingredients together in one bowl and mix until just combined.

Spoon into the cake tins (this makes three of my little loaf tins which may not be very helpful at all… would make one deep 20cm circular tin and one brownie tray I am sure)

bake at 170C until a toothpick comes out clean…this will vary depending on your cake tin dimensions and how your oven behaves but start off with 25-30mins as a guide.

Better to leave a couple of days before eating.

Guilty pleasure: a slice of strong cheese on top of the cake.