C for Citrus, C for Cake, C for Celebration
My toddler is hyper active and over intelligent so time and again we are told to keep her occupied with multiple tasks that engage her both mentally and physically. Finding time from all the household chores to spend time with the kid becomes a challenge and the best solution I have found is to get her involved in what I am doing.
Baking is one of my much loved activities during winters and so from an early age the girl has helped me bake (she is all of 4.5 years right now). Whisking is her special task and she hates handing over the whisk to anyone. Once when her dad baked me a cake on my birthday, she tasted it and commented that, 'its good, but would have been better if I had done it'.
So coming back to the point, winters have set in and the past weekend we got out our baking stuff and got ready to get happy.
Oranges are the girl's special love and she has been looking forward to the fruit hitting the market so we chose that as the flavor we wanted to experiment with. We adapted the recipe from Cafegarima.com with much glee we collected together the following:
3 Oranges and 1 lemon
200 gms sugar coarsely powdered
1 cup olive oil (you can take a lil less if you want, I like my cakes moist so opted for a full cup)
2 eggs
1/2 cup curd
1/2 cup fresh orange juice (using the oranges mentioned above)
2.5 cup white flour (maida)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp Orange essence
A pinch of salt
We cut the oranges in half and using a strainer squeezed out the juice and put it aside. Then proceeded to finely cut up the peel of one orange we added the peel of the lemon to it. We added this to the sugar and rubbed it in well to release the oil from the peels on to the sugar. We left the sugar covered while we went ahead with sifting the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt twice. This is to ensure that the flour is well aerated and will not have any lumps.
Then we poured out the sugar into a large bowl and added the olive oil (leaving just a bit for greasing the baking dishes) to the same and whisked it till it turned creamy.
Eggs, curd and juice were all added into it with generous whisking in between.
Slowly incorporated the flour mix into the batter whisking to ensure a lump free smooth batter.
Pre heated oven to 185 degrees for 5 minutes ( I use the convection mode on my IFB microwave). In the meantime we greased the baking dishes with the olive oil and lightly dusted it with flour. I used a Bundt dish, a loaf tin and 6 muffin holders for the same.
We baked the cake for 40 minutes at 185 degrees, checked with a toothpick to see if it comes out clean. And by the time dadda came home from work we were ready with the season's first cake to welcome him.
The muffins took about 15 minutes and were happily taken to school today.
We had planned to do a chocolate ganache topping on the cake but it tasted so good as is that we let it be and just dusted a bit of powdered sugar on top.
Baking is one of my much loved activities during winters and so from an early age the girl has helped me bake (she is all of 4.5 years right now). Whisking is her special task and she hates handing over the whisk to anyone. Once when her dad baked me a cake on my birthday, she tasted it and commented that, 'its good, but would have been better if I had done it'.So coming back to the point, winters have set in and the past weekend we got out our baking stuff and got ready to get happy.
Oranges are the girl's special love and she has been looking forward to the fruit hitting the market so we chose that as the flavor we wanted to experiment with. We adapted the recipe from Cafegarima.com with much glee we collected together the following:
3 Oranges and 1 lemon
200 gms sugar coarsely powdered
1 cup olive oil (you can take a lil less if you want, I like my cakes moist so opted for a full cup)
2 eggs
1/2 cup curd
1/2 cup fresh orange juice (using the oranges mentioned above)
2.5 cup white flour (maida)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp Orange essence
A pinch of salt
We cut the oranges in half and using a strainer squeezed out the juice and put it aside. Then proceeded to finely cut up the peel of one orange we added the peel of the lemon to it. We added this to the sugar and rubbed it in well to release the oil from the peels on to the sugar. We left the sugar covered while we went ahead with sifting the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt twice. This is to ensure that the flour is well aerated and will not have any lumps.
Then we poured out the sugar into a large bowl and added the olive oil (leaving just a bit for greasing the baking dishes) to the same and whisked it till it turned creamy.
Eggs, curd and juice were all added into it with generous whisking in between.
Slowly incorporated the flour mix into the batter whisking to ensure a lump free smooth batter.
Pre heated oven to 185 degrees for 5 minutes ( I use the convection mode on my IFB microwave). In the meantime we greased the baking dishes with the olive oil and lightly dusted it with flour. I used a Bundt dish, a loaf tin and 6 muffin holders for the same.
We baked the cake for 40 minutes at 185 degrees, checked with a toothpick to see if it comes out clean. And by the time dadda came home from work we were ready with the season's first cake to welcome him.
The muffins took about 15 minutes and were happily taken to school today.
We had planned to do a chocolate ganache topping on the cake but it tasted so good as is that we let it be and just dusted a bit of powdered sugar on top.
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