It's April and again it's the time of the year when your Appetite plays a game of hide and seek with you. It comes at the oddest of hours and leaves you alone just when you have finished preparing dinner. Its a new moon day and that's about it. The calendars of the world don't seem to want to coordinate to build stories. So I have no stories today. When I feel reflective enough, I wonder why eating regular meals is even necessary. It's the time of the year when sunlight and water seem to be the only thing the body needs. Atleast the Avocado seed submerged in water seems to understand that and has thus sprouted some beautiful leaves shaded somewhere between brown and green. As more sunlight touches it, it will get greener. I am guessing my appetite too will return when it's green. Till then, the smells of all naturally edible foods refuse to enter my nose. Except the artificial essences of commercial cakes which I refuse to touch. No offense towards it, I just don't find that smell appetizing. So, I'm not really cooking anything, just remembering a cake I made a few days back. When I'm not busy working or reading or doing other stuff that humans need to do, I like reading about food and recipes instead, I somehow seem to enjoy listening to people's obsessions and love affairs with foods.. I watch people cooking (that's thanks to the 21st century technology) and it is while indulging in such idle past times, that I discovered a wonderful recipe. It's not my own creation but then that's the way recipes are, it can't belong to any Geographic location, when you cook it, it becomes yours. But I'll still call it by its original name for there's not much in the name as Shakespeare's famous words remind people often.
I started with a certain variety of seedless and juiceless oranges lying around at home. They are winter oranges and called Navel oranges. They aren't very sweet when eaten, there's more fiber in there than juice.. but it's still beautiful and an attractive shiny orange.
If you are anything like me you'll feel bad about wasting away the most beautiful part of the fruit and so I wondered what more I could do with the beautiful orange peel besides adding to the non-exhaustive zest collection in my freezer or composting it. That's when I came across this beautiful recipe. It's not every day that you get to eat the peels of fruits and enjoy them too.
Here's what I did
Take one good looking navel orange, wash it well and cut the edges out. Blend it with plain yogurt vanilla essence and a teaspoon or more of sugar. Mine wasn't very juicy. If yours is too juicy, better to remove some juice before blending. Then, in a bowl, take 1 egg and sugar and whisk it till its fluffy. Add to it in installments the flour baking powder mixture and softened butter, mixing constantly to get a homogeneous mixture. Preheat your oven to 165 to 175°C (even if you forget to preheat it should be fine I think, you'll probably get a crisper crumb... I guess, haven't tried.
Going back to the flour mixture, add the orange mixture to it. Mix it well before pouring it into a well buttered cake mould tin. If you under grease your tin, the cake sticks, if you overgrease it, you get a very crumbly greasy crust. Don't compromise on the butter, it's important to balance out the drying bitterness of all the orange peels and fiber. But don't overdo it also.
Now bake it for 55 minutes or more, or untill a skewer comes out clean. Once cooked, you can give it an orange sugar glaze. I got the juice, a nice thick juice, from a smaller half of the orange I used in the cake. This is one of those cakes where a little extra sugar and butter won't hurt unless you can't stand sweets, then this cake is not for you. And if you are in a hurry to cook and super hungry, then too this cake is not for you. I usually enjoy the bitter taste but this cake was nothing like bitter, maybe sweet, tart, light, chewy too.. I'm out of words to describe it. If anything, the glaze made it a bit too sweet but if you keep it in the refrigerator, you won't mind the sweetness and ofcourse, it's a cake, so sweetness is important... You might even welcome it if the weather has been unpredictable. And orange has a way of naturally unblocking sinuses without smelling alcoholic and unnatural.
Comments
Post a Comment