WHOLLY ORANGE!

Boiled WHOLE Orange Jaffa cake.

Oranges are in season! So why not make the most of them, and that means using the whole thing zest and all! This is a cake that allows you to use every bit of an orange and gives you a dense and moist yellowy orange cake marbled with rich dark chocolate.  Delicious.

By boiling the orange the pith becomes soft and the bitterness is taken away, leaving instead a perfect balance of zest and juice and whole orange flavour packed with a punch! You don't have to add the chocolate if Jaffa is not your taste, but if you haven't tried orange with chocolate before it's worth it, they're a food pairing that always works a treat!

Make the most of the orange season and give this cake a go!

Recipe for my Jaffa orange cake that uses the whole orange:
Ingredients:
2 oranges (Navel variety or Valencia, no pips)
125 g butter (melted)
1 cup milk
2 heaped tablespoons of sour cream
3 eggs (Lightly beaten)
2 cups self raising flour 
1 cup sugar 
1tsp baking powder

Boiling oranges

100 grams of dark chocolate. (Chopped roughly)


Method:
1. Place oranges in pot and cover in water, bring to the boil. Pour out water, then replace with more cold water and bring to the boil again then turn the heat off and leave covered for 10 minutes. 
2. Remove oranges and let cool until they can be handled then cut into quarters, and process in the food processor for 1 minute. 
3. Preheat oven to 160 degrees and prepare a cake tin. 
3. Put the pureed oranges in a bowl and add the eggs, milk and sour cream and mix. Then mix in the remainder ingredients. Mix it all together to form the cake batter. 
4. Take the tin and pour half the batter in, then sprinkle with the chocolate. 

5. Poor the remainder of the batter, and place in the oven for 50-60 minutes.
6. Remove from oven and let cool for 5-10 minutes. 
7. Tip cake out and serve. 

This bright yellow cake will have your mouth dripping when it comes out of the oven, but it lasts a week in the fridge and only gets better with age, so theres not rush!

Beautiful Baklava.

باقلوا 
bɑːklɑvɑː

Inspired for something to bring to a lebanese barbeque at the home of the best lebanese cook i know, a mum recently returned from her homeland of Lebanon, i decided to honour the sweet dish of baklava. Nothing beats the irresistible layers of sweetly rich filo pastry folded over a nutty filling spiced with cinnamon. But for my version i decided to spice the sugar syrup, that gets dosed all over these gems, with rose petals and cardamon pods. 

Baklava is characteristic of the cuisine of the Ottoman Empire. Phyllo pastry, which means 'leaf', is speculated to be invented in Istanbul in the time of the early Ottoman empire around 1500, but is now used all over the Mediterranean, Middle east and Europe.  Making this pastry is a difficult task, so i would encourage you to buy the pastry from the shops, and put the love into the filling. 

  

To change the taste of your baklava and make it unique, you can feature different types of tea to infuse the syrup and transform the taste of your beautiful baklava. 

Theres is no such thing as low fat baklava, so get over it and eat it. Is butter Is better as i always say. These moorish treats are worth the indulgence. 

Recipe for Rose and cardamon Baklava:

Ingredients:

1 box of filo pastry 

150 g butter

1.5 cups castor sugar + 40 grams extra 

1.5 cups raw sugar

3 cups water

2 tablespoons honey

4 cardamon pods

*Rose petals. 

80 g Pistachios 

150 g Walnuts

50 grams almond flakes. 

2 tsp of cinnamon powder.

*You can use rose tea from tea shops, or petals from flowers if your not too worried.

Method:

1. To make the syrup put 3 cups of sugar and 3 cups of water in a saucepan with cardamon pods and rose petals. Cook on a low heat until the sugar has dissolved then simmer for 30 minutes and let cool.

2. Meanwhile whiz the walnuts in a food processor to a crumb, not too fine but not too chunky. Then use the same processor to whiz the Pistachios to a finer crumb.

3. In a bowl prepare your nut mix by adding the cinnamon and extra sugar to the walnuts and half the almonds and pistachios. Set aside the rest of the nuts for decoration at the end.

4. Preheat your oven to 155 degrees Celsius, and melt your butter in the microwave for 1 minute. 

5. Roll out your filo pastry then cut half way through the longest side to make two smaller rectangles. Set half aside to use later covered with a damp tea towel to keep moist.

6. Begin the layering process by painting a tray with butter using a pastry brush, and placing your first piece of filo. Repeat by brushing the top side with butter and placing another piece of pastry. Do this with 1/4 of ALL the pastry.

7. Then take 1/3 of a handful of the nuts mixture and scatter across the top of the buttered layers of pastry then continue layering for another 1/4 of pastry.

8. Again scatter 1/3 of the nut mixture on the buttered layers. Remove the pastry that was set aside and continue layering for another 1/4 of the pastry.

9. For the 3rd layer of nut filling use the remainder of the mixture and then finish the layering the rest of the pastry with butter. 

10. When its finished, brush a generous amount of butter on the top and sides of the pastry and put in the freezer for 10 minutes to strengthen the dough.

11. Brush again with butter then score the top of the pastry with a criss-cross.

12. Cover with a piece of baking paper then cook in the oven for 35-40 minutes.

13. Remove the pastry from the oven then add the syrup to the hot baklava, then top with left over nuts and leave to soak. 

14. Cut the baklava into diamonds or triangles and serve at the end of a meal with mint tea. 

Kteer tayyeb! 

This means very delicious in Arabic.