Blood Orange Cake

It's still blood orange season here in Australia, so I thought I'd better get this recipe up pronto.  I was flicking through a book by Kate Young (an ex-Brisbanite) called The Little Library Year, and saw this recipe for blood orange cake.  Her recipes are inspired by books she has read, hence the title.  She has a blog called The Little Library Café, which is where I first came upon her.

Apparently this recipe was inspired by Sherlock Holmes; something to do with murder and orange pips!  Ah, now I see: I've looked it up, and there is a short story by Conan Doyle called - yes, you guessed it - "The Five Orange Pips".  You get them when you're about to die!  Of all the portents of doom, I would never have thought of orange pips!  Hopefully there were less than five pips in this cake :=)

  

yep, we started hoeing in already :=)

Serves 10:

ingredients:

For the crystallised oranges:

150g./¾ cup caster sugar

100 mL/a scant half cup water

2 blood oranges, cut into thin slices/rounds

For the Cake:

200g./7 oz butter

150g./¾ cup caster sugar

3 large eggs

110g./4 oz plain flour

4 Tbs sour cream

200g./7 oz almond meal (ground almonds)

2 tsp baking powder

Sour cream or mascarpone to serve

Method:

Butter well, and line a 20cm/8 inch round cake tin (loose-bottomed if you have one) with baking paper 

Turn your oven to 160C fan/180C/350F to heat 

And prepare your oranges - put the sugar and water into a medium saucepan, and stir over a medium heat till the sugar melts

Add the orange slices and cook on high for five minutes

Take the slices out, place them on a baking-paper lined tray to cool, while you reduce the syrup on low for two to three minutes till nicely thick (like golden syrup)

The cake:

Grab a large mixing bowl, and beat the butter and sugar together till light and fluffy

Add the eggs one at a time, with a spoonful of flour, and beat till nicely combined

Mix in the sour cream, then fold in the almond meal, and sieve the rest of the flour (what's left after beating in the eggs), and the baking powder onto the batter

Fold in gently-gently, and stop as soon as the batter is combined

Grab a silicone brush and paint the syrup over the bottom of your prepared cake tin

Place the orange slices in a lovely pattern over the syrup, and spoon on the cake batter

Smooth it out, and whack the tin into the oven for about an hour or till a skewer comes out clean

Cool it in the tin, then turn it out (invert) onto a serving plate (orange slices up)

Remove the baking paper (!) and serve with the sour cream or mascarpone

Notes:

Try normal oranges if you can't get blood oranges

I use 66 gram/2.3 oz eggs

I don't have a loose-bottomed tin so I just used a regular cake tin; as the cake gets turned over anyway, I'm not sure why Kate suggests a loose-bottomed cake tin

I actually cooked my syrup down a wee bit too far, so I had to heat it again briefly in order to paint it on the bottom of the cake tin :=)

P.S. I've had a chat with Lorraine from the Not Quite Nigella blog today, and she pointed out that she has posted a recipe previously that is very, very similar to this one.  So I just wanted you all to know that Lorraine looks to be the original developer of this recipe!  Not sure where Kate would have picked it up.  The recipes are just so, so similar ...  Please check out Lorraine's blog for her version of this lovely cake, too! 

slice up those colourful oranges

into the syrup they go

look at that colour!

add the almond meal and flour to the creamed butter and sugar

paint the syrup on the bottom of the tin

place the slices over the syrup

smooth the batter over the orange slices

beautifully baked

and the pretty inversed bottom now top

it didn't last long!

Blood orange