Blood Orange Cake- Day 2

This marathon thing is such a rush! A big thanks to Nupur for thinking this up; blogging every day is a great way to get back into the groove. Gone are the much abused excuses of 'no time', 'I'll do it tomm' 'hit a bloggers block' and other stuff I come with to explain my procrastination. Now I wake every day knowing there is something on my to-do list that I love doing! And I love sharing this with fellow bloggers, the sense of a shared goal making this mad rush all the more fun!

Today I've got another recipe from my summer, a citrus cake to continue the sugar rush. I knew I had to taste this fruit when I heard the name, how can you resist something called a blood orange! I've never met a fruit I didn't like, but I do have this thing for the fresh, juicy and tart delights of citrus fruits. So when I saw these beautiful crimson-fleshed oranges at the farmer's market, I did something typical of me and picked up more fruits than I could count. I managed to make a serious dent in the first few days, enjoying them plain and then with my last batch made this cake.





I used Ina Garten's lemon cake recipe as a guideline for this one, simply substituting the lemon with blood orange. And yes Ina, I used only good vanilla and picked my own fruit from my massive orchard in Hamptons. Not really, but say what you will about Ina and her Hamptons, her recipes are foolproof. I also used olive oil in place of the butter, not because I worry about the calories or anything, just because I wanted to see if it works. It did, wonderfully.




1 cup olive oil
2 cups sugar
4 eggs (at room temperature)
1/3 cup grated orange zest
3 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup blood orange juice
3/4 cup buttermilk, at room temperature
1 tsp pure vanilla essence

Mix the olive oil and sugar together, then add the eggs one at a time. Add the orange zest and essence. Sift the dry ingredients- flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and keep it. Mix the buttermilk with the juice and then add the dry and wet mixtures to the oil-sugar-eggs mixture alternately. Ina suggests doing this by beginning and ending with the flour. I followed her instructions and it sure beats dumping in the entire flour at once and then wrestling with your mixer to keep it from flying everywhere.


The batter is enough for two 8 inch loaf pans. I baked mine in one round pan and one in a bundt pan, it turned out fine. Bake at 350 degrees in a pre heated oven for 45 mins,or until a toothpick comes out clean.


Glaze and syrup


Mix 1/2 cup of the orange juice with 1/2 cup of sugar and cook it over a low heat till the sugar dissolves. Just like simple syrup. Pour this syrup on the cakes and let it absorb.
For the glaze, mix some juice with confectioner's sugar and drizzle over the cakes.

It was a moist, crumby cake with an added dimension of flavor due to the tart oranges; the crimson color of the juice staining it a shade of pretty, I'll let the picture speak. Speaking of which, the cake was demolished within seconds of taking this carefully set up picture.

Thanks guys for the comments, I'm on a vacation right now and can't wait to get back and read your posts!