Whole Orange Cake

To celebrate 100 likes on Facebook, here is Kerry's awesome 'Whole Orange Cake'.

Kerry said: I have also substituted lemon or mandarin in this cake. Very quick and easy. I also find it cooks in about 30-35 min in a fan forced oven, so a very quick cook when you are running out of time.

I did pinch the original recipe from somewhere, but I can't remember where.

Serves 8-10 / Preparation 15 min or less

Ingredients
1 orange skin and all
180gm melted butter
3 eggs
1 cup castor sugar
1 ½ cups self raising flour

Icing
2 ½ cups icing sugar
2 tablespoons melted butter
Orange juice and zest


Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees
2. Grease tin, (round tin, or bar tin)
3. Using a food processor, process whole orange until well puréed
4. Add all other ingredients and process until well mixed
5. Bake for 35-45 minutes.

Icing

Mix icing sugar, butter, zest and enough orange juice until icing is of a consistency to run down the sides of cooled cake.

Choc chip choc muffins

Still on the challenge of gluten-free, my latest attempt was chocolate muffins with choc chips.

Last weekend I had an amazing coffee muffin from a local cafe and while I was driving home from the velodrome I decided that I had completed a good workout and deserved that muffin again. Unfortunately the cafe was not open. Instead I went home and quickly cooked these muffins to take to work. I got the thumbs up from all in the office.

Next time I would halve the recipe as I didn't notice how many it cooked until I was part way through quickly cooking them. It made around 20 muffins so I did freeze the leftovers - they defrost quite well.

Also, make sure that all of the additional ingredients don't have gluten (for example, the choc chips). I didn't double check all of the ingredients but my colleague didn't have a problem with them (luckily).

Ingredients
3 cups gluten-free SR flour (I added an extra half cup of flour because I didn't think the mixture was thick enough)
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
200g choc chips
1 1/2 cup milk
120g butter (melted)
2 eggs (beaten)

Method

1. Add flour, sugar, cocoa, choc chips (if you are the sort of person who sifts, sift the flour and cocoa but I didn't bother)
2. Add milk, butter, eggs until just combined.
3. Place into muffin papers in muffin trays
4. Bake for 180 degrees C for 20-25 minutes.

The original recipe was from bestrecipies.com.au

Apple and Cheery ANZAC crumble

I was heading to a friends place earlier in the week and I always bring dessert. I wanted to try something different so I found a wonderful ANZAC top apple crumble but as I always do, added a little twist.

I changed this recipe in a few ways. The original was for 8 servings and 7 apples but I was cooking for 3 so I cooked 4 apples and there was about 6 servings. Once I started the ANZAC top I realised I had forgotten to reduce the qty of the ingredients but I love the crumble so I didn't try to amend the mistake. I also added pecans through the crumble but this was not necessary, I just love pecans. The biggest addition to the recipe was the cherries. I used bottled morello pitted cherries.

Hope you enjoy it like we all did. I was also terribly easy to make.

Ingredients

4 green apples
Cherries - I used about 1/2 bottle but put however many you want.
1 cup plain flour
3/4 cup  (packed) brown sugar
3/4 cup rolled oats
3/4 cup coconut
1 tablespoon cinnamon (ground)
1 1/2 teaspoons nutmeg (ground)
2/3 butter (melted) (I used approx. 120g as I find it difficult to fit cold butter into cup measure)
1/2 cup chopped pecan nuts, roughly chopped

Method

1. Peel and core apples, then cut into rough cubes. Place in a large saucepan and cover with water.
2. Simmer (don't boil) with the lid on - medium heat for approx 5 minutes or until soft. Drain and place apples in the greased baking dish.
3. Combine flour, brown sugar, rolled oats, coconut, pecan nuts cinnamon and nutmeg in a large bowl until evenly mixed.
4. Melt butter and add to mixture.
5. Place cherries in on top of cooked apples.
6. Evenly spread the crumble over the apples and cherries.
7. Bake at 180 degrees C for 30-40 minutes or until topping is slightly browned.

Gluten Free Date and Sultana Rock-Cakes

Oh my, it has been way too long since I have added a new 'tested and true' recipe to the blog.

I have a friend in the office who has been told she is gluten free so I have been having fun with the challenge by changing some of my 'tested and true' recipes by adding gluten free flour. I am not up there completely with gluten free so I have not checked all of the rest of the ingredients but she has not had a problem with my cooking (yet).

Ingredients

2 cups gluten free self-raising flour
1 teaspoon mixed spice (I also added about 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon)
90g butter, partly melted
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sultanas
1/2 cup chopped dates
1/3 cup milk
1 egg

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.
2. Place flour and spice into a large bowl. Add butter (this is where you are meant to rub the butter in but I partly melted the butter and when I put it with the gluten free flour it turned into breadcrumbs (score!)).
3. Add sugar, sultanas and dates.
4. Add milk and egg.
5. Drop dots of mixture onto tray with baking paper. I made about 18 biscuits.
6. Cook for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown.

You can also sprinkle a bit more brown sugar on the top of the biscuits before you put them into the oven.

The office approved of these and I hope you also enjoy them.