The victim? Blood Oranges.
Scalped
Sliced
and disemboweled.
All in the name of dessert.
But oh my, it was a good dessert! This Blood Orange and Vanilla Syrup Cake was another experiment with seasonal winter fruits. I had been eyeing it off in my Seasons cookbook by Donna Hay since the mothership bought it for me last Christmas. As my weakness for all things citrusy and syrupy have been well documented on this blog, this cake was a natural progression from the basic syrup cake to a prettier, deeper flavoured dish.
Easy to prepare, this cake didn’t take long to cook and the only difficulty I had was getting the blood orange stains out of my chopping board! I didn’t realise that the gorgeous deep red juice would be so stubborn! I shook my fist at it. Then let the mothership shoot her tractorbeam of cleanliness at it.
I broke out my bundt pan for this baby
Tah Dah! Golden, puffy goodness!
Note the abundance of progress shots. The deep red of the blood oranges was so beautiful that I got on a bit of a photo taking roll! I just wish that practise made perfect in this case.
Finally, I have a pretty product to photograph. Excitement to the max.
Blood Orange and Vanilla Syrup Cake – Adapted from Seasons by Donna Hay
Ingredients – Topping
1 cup (220g) caster sugar
1/2 cup (125ml) water
1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped
3 Blood Oranges, thinly sliced
Method – Topping
1. Place sugar, water and vanilla in a frying pan over medium heat and stir until sugar has dissolved
2. Add orange slices and simmer for 10-15 mins or until the orange is soft. Remove from heat and set aside
Ingredients – Cake
4 eggs
1 cup (220g) caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup (150g) self raising flour
150g butter
1 cup (120g) almond meal
Method – Cake
1. Place eggs, sugar and vanilla in a bowl and beat until the mixture is thick, pale and triples in size (8-10 min)
2. Sift the flour over the egg mixture and fold through
3. Melt the butter and fold through the cake batter along with the almond meal
4. Line the bottom of a cake tin with the orange slices and remaining syrup. If you are using a spring form tin you might want to wrap your tin in aluminium foil or place a baking tray on the shelf below in the oven in case of any leakage
5. Pour batter over orange slices
6. Bake at 160 degrees celsius for 40 mins or until golden and firm. (I took mine out after about 30 mins)
7. Turn out onto a platter to serve with cream or ice cream.
Hehe I like the post title! Very intriguing! 😛 Seasons is such a great cookbook. I am lusting over the Winter pages at the moment 🙂
Oh I know! The winter desserts look particularly tasty 😀
Anything involving sugar syrups/caramel/ or stovetop custards are my nightmares – 9/10 something will go wrong or I will burn myself!
And good idea to halve the cake – four whole cakes in one cake is too much man! Your cake did look stunning, you never would have guessed what drama came with it 🙂
ohh yummy! i have been looking for a recipe to use up some blood oranges-they are so beautiful to look at.
Definitely use the blood oranges Mangada! Theyre very tasty and so pretty to look at 🙂