Orange & Olive Oil Cake

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I have a block.. well several... but primarily, I find it difficult to cook in kitchens not my own. I should say baking cos its not something where I can throw spices willy nilly and make things alright. I try to avoid it but its not always easy saying no to my baker genes. So when I'm in an unfamiliar kitchen like I am now, I want to bake something which I can make blindly and still get something really yum to satiate those cravings. Its also summer and I'm on a fruit binge which makes things easier. I made a Banana, Orange and Pineapple Fresh Fruit Cake which I forgot to take a picture of. So yeah, no recipe for that yet.


Then I saw this really really cute video by PurpleFoodie and the rest is history as they say. I've made it twice this week already. The best part about this cake, atleast for me, is that I need only use a basic whisk. I hate having to use an electric whisk when I'm in unfamiliar surroundings. This also got me on this craze for baking with olive oil which you are going to see in the next couple of posts. Its so easy, so simple and oh so flavoursome.

Ingredients

2             Oranges*
1cup       Sugar
1tsp        Cinnamon Powder
13/4cup   All Purpose Flour
11/2tsp    Baking Powder
1/4tsp     Baking Soda
3             Eggs
1/2cup    Yoghurt
2/3cup    Extra Virgin Olive Oil

To Serve
Orange Compote and whipped cream

How

Cake

Preheat oven to 170C.
Grease and line an 8 inch tin or loaf pan.
Zest** the Oranges. Rub into the sugar and add cinnamon and mix.
Segment the Oranges and cut each segment to half.
Squeeze the juice from the orange core and mix with yoghurt.
Sift flour, baking powder and baking soda,
Whisk eggs till frothy. Add the orange juice and yoghurt mix, ollive oil and sugar till you get a uniform mix and the sugar grains cant be felt.
Fold in the flour mix slowly along with the orange segments till just incorporated.
Pour into prepared tin and bake for 50-60 mins till a skewer comes out clean.

Compote

Segment 3 oranges over a saucepan to catch the juices. Add the 2-3 tbsps of sugar and simmer for 10 - 15 mins till the segments fall apart and the mixture thickens

*I used imported oranges. I find them easier to segment than the normal Indian ones. If using Indian oranges, Just peel the orange normally after zesting them, separate the segments and remove the white skin around each segment. And of course the seeds! Its a little time consuming, so I prefer using the imported variety.

**I say zest, cos the original recipe also says zest. But they have microplane zesters (which I don't own yet) to make the zesting easy. I peel the skin lightly using a fruit/carrot/potato peeler in long strips, flip it over and gently scrape away the white pith with a paring knife  and then finely chop the zest. Well not finely cos we all like nice chunky pieces of orange zest around here. And I kind of feel this adds a lot more flavour from an orange than if you just zest it.

PS: I had a cute little almost 5 year old who said 'mmmm the cake smells goooodd' just as I started zesting the oranges.

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