Tuesday 8 May 2012

Recipe #17 of NEWrecipes52 ...

I love bank holiday weekends! I love them even more when I get to spend the extra day being creative, be it digi-scrapping, gift making (more on that later in the week) or trying out new recipes in my kitchen. So this past weekend, I tried not 1, not 2, not even 3 but 4, yes FOUR new recipes!!! That's got to be some kind of record, right? My fourth and final new recipe was another cake. Orange and almond cake to be precise ...


I grated the orange zest, removed the white pith from the fruit and pop the remaining flesh into the food processor, along with the ground almonds and blended to form a paste ...


I creamed butter and sugar together using a hand mixer ...


3 eggs were added, 1 at a time and mixed thoroughly after each addition. Then the flour and orange / almond paste were added and folded into the butter / sugar / flour mixture ...


I'm going to let you in on a secret now ... with all the cake baking I've been doing over the past few weeks, I've come to the conclusion that the "creaming" method of cake preparation definitely produces the best quality cakes and the secret seems to be not to "over work" the flour. Gently folding the flour into the sugar / butter / egg mix rather than using a mixer to whizz it all together, really helps prevent the cake becoming too dense and gives the cake a beautifully light and fluffy texture.

Anyhoo, back to my recipe ... the cake batter was divided between 2 prepared cake tins, then baked at 180oC oven for around 25mins or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes away clean.

The cakes were allowed to cool completely, then sandwiched together with a mascarpone cream cheese filling, sweetened with a little icing sugar and flavoured with fresh zingy orange zest ...


The result was a delicious, subtly flavoured, wickedly naughty slice of heavenly goodness ...


I think it's fair to say this recipe was my favourite "new" of the weekend and will definitely be baked again in the [not too distant] future.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

is this your practice for Ona's visit??? :-)))

it looks amazing!!

listgirl said...

Oh my, not too good to look here during afternoon hunger pangs! You've managed to do a cake with my favorite flavors again! Orange and almond and marscapone??? Looks great but I bet it was delish!