Happy Birthday Queenie

The first Monday in June is a public holiday in New Zealand to celebrate the birthday of Queen Elizabeth II. It's our last long weekend until Labour day at the end of October and pretty much marks the beginning of a dreary winter. What better way to celebrate than to have an afternoon tea served on fine china. Tiaras compulsory of course.

We had a lovely range of goodies including pikelets with cream & jam, little bread cases filled with a cheesey corn mixture and topped with tomato, chocolate cake and club sandwhiches. My contribution to the tea was something quick and easy because I was going out the night before and didn't have much time to bake. I made my reliable, tried and tested orange cake. It's one of those ones where you bung everything in the food processor - no creaming required and best of all it doesn't even need icing. I've blogged about it before and you can find the entry.
here

Lest We Forget

Today I went to a potluck lunch at work to farewell a co-worker who is going on maternity leave. She's having a boy so the theme was of course BLUE but you'd be forgiven for thinking the theme was teal. We had bluberry loaf, blueberry muffins (my contribution), a vanilla cake with blue icing and blue lamingtons as well as some savoury items; although who'd think there would be such a thing as too much sugar?

Tomorrow is ANZAC day which is a day of commemoration for those who died in the service of their country. The poppy is an international symbol of rememberance and explains the decoration on the star of the lunch - an ooey gooey citrus cake. I'm pleased to be able to share the recipe with you.


Sonya's Lemon and Orange Crumble Cake

Ingredients
Cake:
1 ¾ cups self raising flour
3/4 cups caster sugar
90g/approx. 3 ounces unsalted butter, chopped
Finely grated rind of one lemon
2 eggs, lightly beaten
Filling:
¼ cup orange juice
¼ cup lemon juice
¾ cup sugar
2 teaspoons cornflour/cornstarch
90g/approx. 3 ounces unsalted butter, chopped
Sifted icing sugar/powdered sugar for dusting

Method
Preheat oven to 160 degrees C/320 degrees C
Line the base and sides of a 20cm/8 inch round springform tin with baking paper
Put the flour, sugar, butter, rind and eggs in a food processor and pulse to combine
Press 2/3 of the mixture into the prepared tin, reserving the remainder
For the filling:
Put the juices, sugar, cornflour, eggs and butter into a medium pan and stir over a low heat until the mixture comes to the boil
Reduce heat and cook for 2-3 minutes
Remove and stand for 10 minutes to cool
When the citrus filling is cool pour it over the mixture in the tin
Crumble the remaining cake dough on top
Bake for 30-35 minutes
Stand on a wire rack before removing from the tin
Dust with icing sugar

Oranges Poranges

I'm channelling Witchiepoo today (and showing my age!). Let's all sing together...

Oranges poranges, who says,
oranges poranges, who says,
oranges poranges, who says?
there ain't no rhyme for oranges!

Back in September I posted about a whole orange cake that involved simmering an orange, cooling it, removing the pips, etc etc etc. Some of my readers commented that the cake sounded nice but the method seemed like a whole lot of faff and faddle. Well here's the solution - a very easy whole orange cake that you make in the food processor. Even better, it's an un-iced cake - my favourite kind to make being the lazy baker I am.

The recipe is from a great little New Zealand site called Foodlovers and the forum there is a wonderful place to visit if you are searching for an elusive recipe or wondering what to do with that glut of fruit or unusual ingredient. You can find the orange cake recipe here.


Being Christmas time I decided to be a little creative with the recipe and add some frozen cranberries (about a cup) to the mix. Frozen cranberries are relatively new to New Zealand groceries and I've not had a lot of experience with them. They were whole cranberries and I worried about them being too tart in the cake so I added them early and let the food processor cut them up a bit - probably a little bit too much but at least I'll know for next time. That's the nice thing about experimenting.

This cake is very moist and has a nice texture. It has just a hint of bitterness on account of the peel but it's pleasant and not overwhelming. This is one of those good for breakfast cakes but then again isn't any cake breakfast food???

Happy Birthday To Me

Good grief - I knew I was hopeless at remembering people's birthdays but it's a bit sad when I can't even manage a post about my own!

26 September is also the birthday of a co-worker and we had a shared morning tea. Pictured above is the delicious flourless citrus cake made for me by my boss. It was moist and dense and would be a lovely dessert cake because it's not too sweet. I imagine it would be even better served with a dollop of creamy Greek yoghurt or some marscapone.

Orange, Lemon and Almond Cake
Source unknown but based on a Sephardic recipe from Claudia Roden

Ingredients
1 orange
1 lemon
400g ground almonds
150g sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 eggs
Butter and flour for preparing tin
Handful of flaked almonds for decoration

Method
Simmer the orange and lemon in water til soft (the lemonw ill probably soften first) – allow about 45 minutes
Leave to cool
Open the fruit and remove the pips
Blend with just enough of the cooking liquid to make a pulp or push through a sieve
Beat the eggs in a bowl and stir in the fruit pulp and dry ingredients
Put into a greased and floured tin (one with a loose base is best) and sprinkle the top with the flaked almonds
Bake at 190 degrees celcius for about 40-50 minutes or until browned and springy to touch
Allow to cool a little and then remove from the tin and put on a serving plate
Dust with icing sugar if desired

Also on the morning tea table was a lovely lemon syllabub sponge cake which was a Ruth Pretty recipe from the Saturday newspaper, a hummingbird cake, chocolate brownies (recipe to follow in another post), some cute little cupcakes (coffee and lemon - but not together), and a lemon curd cake. I was too busy eating a little slice of everything to take photos.

I had a wonderful day which even included flowers and a card from my husband. My birthday gifts from friends included the usual suspects of chocolates, quilting fabric and wine. I also received Paris Sweets by Dorie Greenspan and Simple Indian Cooking by Madhur Jaffrey and I've already earmarked several recipes to try. My reading pleasure will continue with Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.