Orange Cake

Tomorrow (well today, now since it's past midnight) is King's Day here in the Netherlands. Apparently a tradition that is often linked to the color orange, as many are in this country. I'm not so familiar with the holidays, but since we had hallway dinner today (yesterday), we had a theme of orange food.

The moment I heard that, I thought of the jars of candied tangerine zest that I still had from winter break (same as the ones used here). Then my thoughts drifted to candied orange slices, and orange flavored cake in general. So I stopped by the supermarket after class this morning, grabbed a net of oranges, and restocked on self-rising flour.

I set off first by really cleaning one of the oranges (salt or baking soda is really effective). Then I did my best to cut it into evenly thick slices. As I am so not proficient at that, I cut the whole orange, and selected the five best slices. A simple syrup (1:1 sugar to water ratio) in a pot, and those slices, simmering over medium-low heat started the candying process.

I shaved off the zest from most of the remaining, messed up slices, and chopped those up really small. Then I squeezed the juice into a measuring cup to use in the recipe. I wanted to test pairing it with some black tea flavor, so I stuck an English breakfast teabag into some hot water, and topped my orange juice with that.

The base of this recipe is the same as the matcha mochi cake I made a few weeks ago. I replaced the water with the orange juice/tea mix, didn't put in any matcha, but instead threw in the orange zests and a handful of candied orange peels into the dry ingredients, and followed the rest of the recipe, omitting the vinegar, as I deemed the orange juice sufficient. Due to the juice's acidity, I also increased the amount of sugar.

After cooling, I dusted the top with icing sugar, and decorated with the drained candied orange slices. Unfortunately, the tea taste wasn't strong enough to come through all that orange. I'm happy the cake came out fine as I had a couple of mishaps (accidentally used baking powder instead of baking soda...)

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RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 200 g self-rising flour
• 120 g sugar
• 75 g cooking oil
• 175 g orange juice/tea
• zest of an orange
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• icing sugar, for decorating
• candied orange slices, for decorating

  Procedure

1. Preheat oven 170˚C.
2. Grease and flour a loaf pan, or line it with baking paper. Alternatively, line a muffin pan with cupcake liners.
3. In a bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking soda, and orange zests.
4. In another bowl, mix orange juice/tea, oil, and vinegar.
5. Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Mix until just combined.
6. Pour into prepared pan.
7. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
8. Cool on a grill.
9. Once completely cool, dust with icing sugar, and lay candied orange peels on top.

Orange Chocolate Cake

To celebrate a double birthday (early birthdays for my brother and my dad), I made two desserts. Well technically, I was supposed to just make this cake, and my cousin B was supposed to make the apple tart. In the end, she had other stuff to do as well, so she helped me make the applesauce. Then I made the rest of the tart using store-bought puff pastry for the crust. This was also because my dad mentioned preferring it with puff pastry.

While debating what cake to make, I recalled the Black Forest cake I had made. I didn't have applesauce, but I used some my cousin made for the apple tart. I also used a sweetened cocoa powder (like those to mix in milk) as I did not have unsweetened cocoa, so reduced the sugar a lot. Also, instead of using 1/2 cup of decaf, I used about 1/4 cup decaf, and 1/4 cup fresh squeezed orange juice. To add to the orange flavor, I zested an organic orange and threw it in with the dry ingredients.

For decoration, I sliced a smaller organic orange and simmered it in a simple sugar syrup (1 part sugar, 1 part water) until translucent, then drained on a grill. On a whim, I took some chocolate, melted it with a bit of vegetable oil to make it shinier. Then I swiped some leaf/drop shapes on a sheet of baking paper using the back of a spoon, and put it in the freezer to set.

I whipped cream with some icing sugar in it and put it between the two cake halves. Then I spread the rest over the top of the cake, and cut halves of candied orange slices before arranging them on top. With the chocolate, I settled for a flower-like shape, trying my best to keep the chocolate from melting in my hands. I chopped up a bit of a leftover candied orange for the flower's center.

Here's the cake with the candles, as well as a bit of the apple tart. I had planned to try making my own puff pastry, but didn't want to make the effort while having so much to do that day. Unfortunately, I had forgotten my camera at college, so had to settle with my phone's camera. We had a nice dinner with family, ate the cake, apple tart, and a fruit salad accompanied by some tea, then played games. All in all, it was a great party!

Orange Zest Cupcakes

For a quick brunch between friends, I decided to make some cupcakes (mostly because I've been wanting to bake something, but didn't have the opportunity to). I still had some candied orange peels from the last candied orange cupcakes, so I opted for an orange-y cupcake. Good thing I still have some oranges sitting in the fruits basket!

I baked a half batch of basic vegan cake (this time, it yielded 6 cupcakes), in which I added about 2 tbs of candied orange zests, and grated in the zest of an additional orange.

I made a batch of frosting with some orange blossom aroma, and then decorated with an orange supreme and some more candied peels.

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BASIC VEGAN CAKE RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• pinch of salt
• 1 cup unsweetened soymilk
• 1/2 cup oil
• 2 tbs vanilla extract
• 1 tbs white or apple cider vinegar

  Procedure

1. Preheat oven 180°C. Grease and flour a cake pan. Alternatively, use cupcake liners.
2. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together all the dry ingredients.
3. In another bowl, whisk together all the wet ingredients.
4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones.
5. Mix well, ensuring there are no dry pockets of flour.
6. Pour into pan.
7. Bake for 30 mins (for a whole cake) or 20 mins (for normal-sized cupcakes), or until a toothpick comes out clean.
8. Let it cool and ice/top it however you want.

FROSTING RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 5 tbs flour
• 1 cup soymilk
• 1 cup butter, softened
• granulated sugar, to taste
• 1-2 tsp of flavor

  Procedure

1. In a saucepan, whisk together flour and soymilk. Heat until thickened to a batter-like consistency.
2. Add in the flavor.
3. Cool to room temperature. 
4. Beat together butter and sugar until fluffy, and no graininess from the sugar remains
5. Add the flour/soymilk mix, and beat until it reaches a frosting consistency.

Candied Orange Cupcakes

I had some whipped cream left from Apple Cinnamon Cake, so I wanted to quickly make some cupcakes to top it with. Unfortunately, the whipped cream had gone bad already...

Instead, I decided to candy some orange peels, and add them to the batter. I also used the leftover ones as topping.

The recipe used is the basic vegan cake recipe I always use, except I ran out of soy milk, so I used cow's milk (Recipe in the linked cake above). Half a batch made 7 cupcakes. I added the candied peels of about 1 orange.

Lemon Crumble Cheesecake

Yesterday was my brother's birthday. He's not a big fan of cheesecake, but my mom had already ordered a durian cake for him. That cake, however, has eggs, which means not everyone could eat it. So as usual, I took it upon myself to make a cake.

My mom's first suggestion was "a banana cake," to which my first thoughts were "I have only made one before in my life, and it's not something I see as a birthday cake." Then after some thought, she added "what about that really good lemon cheesecake you made before?" I knew it was her favorite of all cheesecakes I'd made (and that she had eaten), so I thought "why not?"

The recipe is the same as this one, except I used 2 whole lemons in zest and in juice. I used about 185 g of cream cheese, and 500 g of sour cream. For the egg replacer, I used my usual Orgran ones, since I had it on hand (instead of making my own like that time I made this cheesecake).

I thought the topping being crumble mix would make it kind of boring. Decorating the cake makes it much more interesting, but the challenge was to decorate it without making the crumble topping soggy. I went for an arrangement of 3 candied lemon slices. Easy enough to make: slice lemon, boil in a sugar syrup (2 parts of water for 1 part of sugar), then let cool. After putting them on, I sprinkled some granulated sugar for extra prettiness.

Last Christmas, one of my brothers gave me a decorating pen, with which I could write things on cake. I thought I'd test it out on this cake, using some chocolate.

I tested it out a bit on some spare baking paper, to make sure I could control it well enough. Surprisingly, it is easy to use. Just squeeze the barrel a bit while writing.

Melted some chocolate chips over a bain-marie. Then I got to writing. I tried to copy the Brock Script typeface for the capital letters, the rest being my own (neatified and fancified) handwriting.

"Bon Annif" is short for "Bon Anniversaire," which means "Happy Birthday" ~

Candied Lemon-Orange Zest

A few days ago, I made these candied lemon and orange zest. I was making a fruit salad, and thought it would be a waste to throw away these nice zests, so after scrubbing them, I separated them from the bitter white parts.

After cutting into strips, I blanched them a bit in boiling water, removed them and drained them, and then dunked them and simmered in a bit of sugar syrup (sugar to water ratio 1:1).

The water from blanching and the leftover syrup were good, so I mixed them and made tea.

I tried making steamed cheesecake, but seeing how I didn't have any cream cheese, and not enough quark to make a full recipe, I kind of eyeballed the amounts and mixed some quark, cornstarch, and baking powder together. Then I threw in the candied zests, and steamed it. Guess I went a bit overboard on heat (or on baking powder)....

After cooling and refrigeration, it was ok... but the texture wasn't really great. Instead of nice creamy cheesecake, it was something closer to cheese, like some mozzarella or something, except less smooth. This would be something to experiment some more with.

The finished cheesecakes were pretty though. They tasted nice, just the texture was horrible for a cheesecake.