Half-Baked

An occasional series whereby Jule admits she is not Julia.

This Week: Whole Orange Cake

When a recipe for a cake makes you go: Really? That’s a recipe you should try. Such was the case with Whole Orange Poppyseed Cake which uses, you guessed it, whole oranges: The peel, the pulp, and all the rest, not counting the sticker on the outside, of course, all mushed up in a food processor. It also calls for three sticks of butter and six eggs, but let’s move on, shall we?

The recipe comes by way of Joy the Baker, my new favorite baking blog. Some of her posts would make those of us on the copy desk cringe, but her recipes and photos are fucking magic. (Seriously, check out yesterday’s post: Red Velvet Black and White Cookies. My crush on Joy now knows no bounds.)

Joy adapted the recipe from a podcast by Sweet Melissa, a wonderful bakery I used to frequent when I lived in Brooklyn. So I knew this was going to be good. But, of course, I found a way to sort of mess it up. Fortunately, baking, despite what you’ve heard, is not an exact science. You can mess up all sorts of steps and still produce something that will make you go: Wow. My glaze was too thin (see exhibit A above); I forgot the poppyseeds in the cake, so swirled them into the glaze instead, which worked out fine.

Recipe after the jump.

Whole Orange Cake with Poppyseed Glaze

INGREDIENTS

For the Cake:
2 whole oranges, seedless Navel oranges
3 sticks unsalted butter, melted
6 eggs
2 cups sugar
3 cups flour
4 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt

For the Glaze:
Juice of half an orange
Zest of 1 lemon
3 cups powdered sugar
2 Tablespoons poppy seeds

WHAT TO DO WITH THEM

1. Preheat oven to 350. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
2. Slice the two oranges into wedges. PULVERIZE them in the food processor. Joy says it should look like this:

3. Add eggs to the bowl of a fancy standmixer or beat them with a handmixer for a minute or two on low speed. Slowly add the sugar to the beating eggs. Once incorporated, add the melted butter (let it cool some) in a steady stream. Once incorporated, add the orange pulpy goodness.
4. Using a large wooden spoon or spatula, fold in the dry ingredients. Stop mixing once all dry ingredients are no longer visible.
5. Pour batter into very well greased and floured Bundt pan. Bake at 350 for 60-70 minutes.
6. Let it cool at least a half-hour before turning it out on a plate.
7. Mix the glaze. You’re on your own here. I’d follow Joy’s recipe above. I thought it was too much sugar, so did my own thing and my glaze was too thin. Hers looks great. Mine looked OK and tasted much better than the photo. Because photos rarely taste good.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 12:12 pm and is filed under Food & Drink, Half-Baked. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.