If you follow me on twitter {Ooh sneaky social media plug- if you want to follow me you can do so here!} you may have seen that last week I did some baking- this delicious orange and vanilla cake in fact! I stumbled upon this delicious on pintrest while looking for healthy recipes- now it may not be super healthy but its far better for you than your average eggs-butter-flour combo. Its dense but extremely moist thanks to the sweet orange syrup that you pour over while the cake is cooling! I have to give credit to Rachel from Rachel Cooks for this amazing cake; her version looks a thousand times better than mine and her blog is amazing, a flurry of delicious recipes to keep everyone in your household happy! She certainly puts my cooking to shame. So if you feel like whipping up a treat for your family and friends why not give this a shot.
First things first your going to have to pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit or around 175 celsius. Then grease and line a 8-inch cake pan with non stick paper; the worst thing in the world is baking a cake, having the smell wafting through the house all day and then it gets stuck to the tin when you try to get it out! Trust me- the number of times i've forced my family to eat cake straight out of the tin is embarrassing {It still tastes the same I swear!} It's far easier just to spend an extra few minutes lining the tin. Once you've done the lining business sift together the plain flour, wholemeal flour and the baking powder. In a second bowl combine the greek yogurt, one cup of the caster sugar, eggs, orange zest and the insides of the vanilla pod's. Put the empty vanilla bean pod's in a container with the remaining caster sugar- we'll combine this with the left over orange juice later to make that syrup.
Slowly fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until they are just combined. It's so, so important that you make sure not to over mix the ingredients as the gluten strands in the flours will tighten and cause your cake to be tough and not very nice :( Once it's all mixed together pour the batter into your pre-lined tin and pop it in the oven for 40-50 minutes or until a knife comes out clean. While thats baking you can get onto your syrup. Combine the remaining sugar, vanilla pods and the juice of your zested oranges in a small pot over a medium heat until all the sugar is dissolved. Once all the sugar is dissolved take the syrup off the heat and leave it to cool slightly while your cake is cooking. If you want to go the extra mile and add some candied oranges to your cake all you have to do is make a simple sugar syrup which is basically one part sugar to one part water, thinly slice some oranges and boil them in the syrup for around 15 minutes or until the white 'pith' goes clear. Leave them to cool on a sheet of baking paper until your ready to add them to your cake. *I used one cup of caster sugar, one cup of water and one orange!
When your cake is ready to come out of the oven {You'll know when its ready when a butter knife can be inserted into the middle of the cake and it comes out clean} let it cool in the tin for 15 minutes before transferring it to a clean rack. This is the fun bit- with a knife or skewer punch some tiny holes into your cake, this will help get the syrup into every nook and cranny and leave your cake super moist. Then start ladling you syrupy goodness over your cake. If the syrup runs off the cake and into the tin or rack that its sitting on just grab a spoon and keep ladling it on top. When your out of syrup add the candied orange's or whatever you've chosen to garnish it with. I decided to add the sugar-fied vanilla beans as well just for decoration- I wouldn't recommend eating them! So there you go; a semi-healthy delicious cake that could almost put your Nannas cooking to shame; actually who am I kidding- nannas cooking will always be the best!
p.s If you haven't entered my give-away yet make sure you do. There's four Shanghai Suzy lipsticks up for grabs- and it's open worldwide! What have you got to loose ;)
