Chocolate orange cake

We've had more extreme weather so we've been doing some more baking (you'll see the snow in the background of  some of the pics). This time it was chocolate orange cake – one of my favourites – from Nigella Lawson's Feast (an adaptation of the clementine cake from How to Cook which, in turn, is an Italian recipe from Anna del Conte I believe). It's a doddle to make and an easy option with a youngster, although probably a bit too adult for their taste due to its plain appearance and lack of obvious sweetness. It's great to serve plain or with some crème fraïche or Greek yoghurt. At my mother's 60th birthday dinner party we had it with whipped cream flavoured with a generous splash of Grand Marnier. Yummy!

whole oranges approx 375g total weight
6 eggs, beaten
1 heaped teaspoon baking powder
half a teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (I used baking powder instead)
200g ground almonds
250g caster sugar
50g cocoa

Firstly, cook the whole oranges in a saucepan with water until soft (this takes a couple of hours). Drain, remove any large pips and, with a hand blender, liquidise the whole lot (pith, peel etc) to make a purée. Grease and line a 20cm springform tin. Preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4.

Put the cooled fruit purée in a large mixing bowl and add the rest of the ingredients. I place the bowl on some flat, digital scales which simplifies things.

With a wooden spoon, mix everything together thoroughly until you have a thick, glossy batter.

Pour the batter into the prepared tin and level it off. Bake for about an hour (check after 45 minutes) until a skewer comes out clean. If you have a particularly hot (or fan) oven, after you've checked it, it's worth covering the cake with foil to stop it burning.

Leave it to cool in the tin before turning it out onto a cooling rack. We leave the cake on a plate in the fridge, covered in foil, where it keeps brilliantly for a week or so, staying beautifully moist.

I think Alice was being polite about tasting the cake. She had a mouthful without grimacing, but seemed to prefer her Petit Filou.

Gingerbread people for a freezing cold day

Alice was due to return to nursery today, but this has been put on hold by a nasty cough and cold so, to help keep ourselves warm on this perishing day, we did a bit of baking. Using an easy recipe taken from my trusted Mary Berry's Ultimate Cake Book, I managed to keep our young lady amused for a while.

350g plain flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (I used baking powder instead as I'm out of bicarb)
2 teaspoons ground ginger
100g margarine (I used butter)
175g light muscovado sugar
4 tablespoons golden syrup
1 egg, beaten

Pre-heat the oven to 190°C/Gas Mark 5 and lightly grease a couple of large baking trays.

Alice helped me measure out the flour, baking powder and ginger into a large bowl. Once I added the butter, roughly chopped, she and I rubbed it into the dry ingredients which she enjoyed as it was "a bit messy". Alice then stirred in the sugar. As I spooned in the golden syrup she kept asking to taste it as it slowly drizzled into the bowl. The beaten egg went in after this and I took over for a while, stirring everything together, before we both kneaded the dough. As this recipe makes quite a large quantity, half the dough was put in the freezer for another time. On the floured table we then rolled out the dough  to a thickness of about 5mm and Alice cut out the men, while I worked on the women (we have two cutters). She was starting to lose interest by this point but, as they only needed 10–12 minutes in the oven, she was soon fired up to see (and taste) the end results.

The gingerbread biscuits were a big hit – with a nice balance of mellow spice and sweetness. The only problem is that, unless you remove them quickly from the baking tray, they soon harden up and some will end up decapitated. You can see from the picture that we made a large batch using only half the dough (but our cutters are smallish at about 8cm long).