40. Whole Orange Cake

September 04, 2019 by Sophie Faulkner in Recipe

2 months??? Oops.

I really have no real excuse. I’ve been busy with exams and I did go on holiday, but 2 months is pretty inexcusable! I’m sorry, I’ll try not to let it happen again.

This week I decided to get back into baking with something I had never even heard of before, that I saw on Sortedfood, link to the inspiration video here. They put a WHOLE orange into their batter. Not just the juice, not just the zest. The whole orange, pith and all (well, except for the little stem bit).

I decided to take it to the next level and do a whole cake rather than muffins, and top it with some italian meringue and candied orange peel. Let’s get stuck in.

Makes 1 cake, serves 8.

Ingredients

For the cake

1 orange
4 oz butter
6oz caster sugar
6oz self-raising flour
Pinch of salt
2 eggs
2-3 tbsp milk

For the Italian Meringue/Candied Peel

4oz caster sugar
2 egg whites
Peel of one orange

Method

Cake:

Boil the whole orange for an hour. Pop the telly on and have a cuppa.
Take the orange out of the water and remove the little stem at the top, this should pop right off. Drop your orange into a blender, or use a hand held blender, and puree the whole thing.
Preheat the oven to 180C.
In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar for the cake.
Add in the flour and a pinch of salt and mix in.
Mix in the eggs and the pureed orange and mix until fully incorporated, then mix in the milk until it is a reasonable consistency.
Line a cake tin with greaseproof paper or butter it, and pour your mixture in.
Bake for 40-45 minutes until golden on top and when skewered with a knife, the knife comes out clean.
Allow to cool.

Candied Peel:

Use a potato peeler to peel strips of zest off the orange, trying to get as little of the pith with it as possible. If any pith comes with your strips, scrape it off with the back of a knife or with the peeler itself.
Place your strips in a pan of cold water and bring to the boil. Once boiling, drain the water out and replace with cold water. Do this a further 3 times. It will remove the bitterness from the orange peel.
Place the strips to the side.
In a pan, combine the 4oz caster sugar with 4oz water and bring to the boil. Boil until the sugar has completely dissolved and the water is clear again. Put your peel strips back in and let stand for 10-20 minutes.
Take your strips out with a fork and allow to drain on some kitchen roll.

Italian Meringue:

Whisk the egg whites to medium stiff peaks.
Bring your sugar syrup mixture (what you have just removed your peel from) back to the boil and keep heating until it reaches 114C.
Pour the sugar syrup into your egg whites WHILE WHISKING, and keep whisking for another 7-10 minutes until your egg white mixture has cooled completely

Assembly:

Preheat your grill to high setting (unnecessary if you have a blowtorch)
If your cake has risen a lot and created a dome, consider slicing the top off to make it level.
Pipe your Italian meringue onto your cake using a star shaped nozzle to get lots of ridges.
Place your cake under the grill for about a minute to get the edges of your Italian meringue to brown. If you have a blowtorch, use this so you can control where it is browning.
Decorate the cake with your candied peel.

Enjoy!

28. Coconut Orange Genoise Cupcakes

January 31, 2019 by Sophie Faulkner in Recipe

Who’s ready for an upper arm workout?!

Oh, no one? That’s a shame. Better hope you have an electric whisk then.

This week I decided to put it to an Instagram poll as to what to make. The categories were light/fruity vs spiced/chocolate, something big to share vs bitesized treats and vegan vs dairy. I slightly jumped the gun on the first poll which eventually had a close win with spiced/chocolate, but let’s be honest, I’ll likely do that soon anyway! So I though with light/fruity that I would veer away from my usual lemon based things and go a bit more exotic and combine coconut and orange as my flavours. Ooh it worked well. Would recommend.

I was also out of self raising flour this week, and rather slog to the shops to get some, I decided to make a genoise sponge mix instead, which made my arm very very sore from the whisking. Why I didn’t decide to use an electric whisk I do not know. I should hit the gym more. Genoise sponges only get their raise and lightness from the air trapped inside from whisking, which is why it is so important to whisk A LOT. Worth it though. They’re gooooood.

Makes 12 cupcakes

Ingredients

For the genoise sponge

4 eggs
125g (4.5 oz) caster sugar
110g (4oz) plain flour
50g (1.75oz) butter, melted
20g (0.75oz) dessicated coconut

For the orange sugar syrup

50g (1.75oz) caster sugar
30ml water
juice of one orange

For the chantilly cream

300ml double cream
15g (0.5oz) icing sugar
zest of one orange
dessicated coconut to sprinkle

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C
On a simmering bain marie, whisk your eggs and sugar together until pale and thick, almost mousse like. Once thickened, take off the bain marie and whisk until the ribbon stage is reached and the mixture has cooled. (The ribbon stage is where if you take the whisk out and dribble a figure of 8 onto the mix, the 8 stays there for a couple of seconds before sinking back in).
Sieve and fold in the flour a bit at a time. Be careful not to knock out too much air when folding! Fold in the dessicated coconut too.
Pour in the melted butter around the edges of the bowl and fold that in gently.
Line a cupcake tin and fill with your mixture.
Bake at 180C for 18-20 minutes until golden and they spring back.
Leave to cool.
Put all the ingredients for the sugar syrup in a pan and bring to a boil, then remove from the heat, providing that the sugar has all dissolved.
Brush the sugar syrup onto the cupcakes while still in the tin and liners so they can really soak in the syrup.
Whisk the cream and sugar together until it forms soft peaks, then add in the orange zest.
Remove the cupcakes from the tin and liners, if so desired.
Pipe the cream onto the cupcakes and sprinkle over the dessicated coconut.
Enjoy!

Week 6: Cake week

November 13, 2018 by Sophie Faulkner in Weekly update

FINALLY. CAKE WEEK. You would have thought that cake week would be pretty early on, but apparently not. I suppose it makes sense that on a patisserie course we focus on pastry first, but still. Cake is pretty important. In the grand scheme of life at least.

We started the week with a lecture all about dairy products which was not bad at all. We had Chef Matthew who is just great, and really tries to make our lectures fun for us which I appreciate. We got to make our own butter by shaking up jars of double cream and then eat it on bread and have clotted cream on scones. It was pretty great as lectures go.

Moving on to the exciting part of the week, the actual baking. On Thursday we made a marble loaf cake and madeleines. I’m not sure why, but I found the practical went immensely smoothly and I just had fun doing it. Often there is a little sense of panic that I might be doing something wrong or not fast enough, but cake is my home ground. I have no worries when it comes to cake. Bring it on.

Both my marble cake and madeleines were pretty tasty and didn’t last too long!

On Friday we made genoise sponge. Thursday’s high didn’t quite carry over, but it was still ok really. Genoise sponges don’t have any raising agent, and so all the rise comes from beating the eggs, which is a bit of a work out. Who needs arm day at the gym?

While my chocolate piping obviously needs work (my piping bag fell apart a bit towards the end, not ideal) I’m pretty happy with how my cake turned out. I had good reviews from my friend Jacob, who I gave it to to share with his family. I already had so much cake at home, I really didn’t feel the need for more. Especially not one with raspberry jam in.. Not a big raspberry fan.

All in all though, I think this week went pretty well! Bring on more cakes please.

P.S. I REMEMBERED TO ACTUALLY TAKE PICTURES THIS WEEK AND I AM VERY PROUD OF MYSELF.

15. Chelsea Buns

September 29, 2018 by Sophie Faulkner in Recipe

When I got back from holiday, one of the very first things I did was catch up on Great British Bake Off. Yes, I know it’s not the same now that it’s on Channel 4 and there’s no Mary, Sue and Mel. BUT, I wasn’t really watching it just for them. (Well, I mean, Mary is a national treasure and I miss her on GBBO a lot and Sandy and Noel just can’t fill Mel and Sue’s shoes, even though they try). I was watching it for the bakes. Watching these 12 amateur bakers attempting more and more complex bakes every week. They were who I wanted to be. I even applied one year, but annoyingly they went with Michael. Also from Durham University. I was not bitter at all…..

I still watch GBBO with the same love for each and every bake. I love watching basic ingredients change into something beautiful. Or not as the case may be, the disasters make me feel a little better about my own baking mishaps. It’s just such a great show. I could ramble about it for ages.

But I’ll spare you. All this preamble is leading up to today’s recipe. Inspired by bread week, I decided to try my hand at Chelsea buns. I have never made Chelsea buns before and I am very proud of how mine turned out. I used the BBC Good Food recipe (here) as my basis, and swapped out the mixture of dried fruit for just raisins and added in some orange zest, as inspired by some of the bread week signature bakes. They turned out great and I’d recommend giving them a go!

SIDE NOTE: These buns were made for a Macmillan coffee morning. If you want to find out more about Macmillan Cancer Support and the great work they do, click here. If you’d like to donate to Macmillan, click here.

Makes 9 buns

Ingredients

For the dough

450g (16oz) plain or strong white flour
14g (0.5oz) dried yeast (2 sachets)
50g (1.75oz) caster sugar
Pinch of salt
150ml warm milk
1 egg
50g (1.75oz) butter, melted

For the filling

25g (1oz) butter, room temperature
125g (4.5oz) raisins
Zest of one large orange
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
25g (1oz) caster sugar (or light brown sugar)

For the glaze

25g (1oz) caster sugar

Method

Mix all the dry ingredients for the dough together in a bowl. Make a well in the middle and add in the milk, butter and egg. It can help to beat the egg before you add it, but it’s not really much more work if you don’t. Mix it together well, until it starts to form a dough and then use your hands. If once it has formed a dough it feels a bit dry, add a little splash of water, or if it feels too wet add a bit more flour.
Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface until it starts to feel smooth and elastic. When done, form into a ball and set in a lightly oiled or greased bowl to prove. Cover with cling film and leave in a warm spot for an hour until it doubles in size.
Knead the dough a couple of times to knock out the air and then form into a rectangle, about 30cm by 20cm. Spread over the butter and then sprinkle on the raisins. In a bowl mic together the sugar, spices and zest and then sprinkle that over the dough too.
Roll the dough starting at the long edge to get a 30cm long sausage. Slice this into 9 equal sized rounds. Grease an 8”x8” square tin and arrange the slices in the tin. Cover with a damp tea towel and leave to prove for half an hour. Preheat the oven to 180C during the prove.
Bake the buns for 10 minutes at 180C and then decrease to 160C and bake for another ten minutes.
To make the glaze mix the caster sugar together with a tablespoon of water. Once the buns are out of the oven, brush on the glaze immediately. Allow to cool a bit before serving warm or fully and serve cold.