Whole Orange Cake (with a little Chocolate)

Whole Orange Cake (with a little Chocolate)

This is a gluten-free cake that is made with whole oranges, minus the pips, and with a little chocolate.

Another abitmoreveg recipe. I found a cake recipe online that used whole oranges and I wanted to see how it worked. To be honest I can’t see how using a whole orange is better than using the juice of the orange and it’s zest. It’s quicker but I don’t think it’s better. This was just an experiment for me. It’s okay – it does smell gorgeous while baking though.

I discovered this recipe which uses whole oranges (minus only the pips) in a cake. I was intrigued but I’m trying to eat healthily so I’m avoiding refined sugar as much as possible and I am not going to be experimenting with dessert recipes for a while. Then I had this bunch of bananas that were so ripe all they would be good for was baking in a cake. I often bake simple cakes with almond flour, bananas, eggs and whatever fruit I have to hand. So I decided to experiment with making a whole orange cake using bananas rather than sugar to sweeten the cake. Since it was an experiment I also added in some frozen raspberries that I had leftover.

The seeds in the raspberries were a problem but the taste was interesting enough that I decided to have another go.

*****

I bought two bunches of bananas last week just to make sure I would have enough ripe ones to work on the whole orange cake recipe. Last time I added some raspberries and they worked well taste-wise but all the seeds were a problem. This week I went with adding a bit of lemon juice instead. I don’t think that the oranges by themselves would be sharp enough. I also added some coconut oil to make it a little less moist – I don’t know how but coconut oil seems to make cakes more spongy than fudge-like in texture. And then, because the taste reminds me of jaffa cakes (a little) I decided to add a thin layer of chocolate to the top. The result – a cake I’m quite happy with.

This is another gluten-free recipe. I have been thinking about going gluten-free for a few years but very recently I definitively decided to go gluten-free.

As well as being gluten-free it’s also full of good fat, fibre and protein. I have added honey to it so although it doesn’t contain any refined sugar it still has a good bit of sugar in it.

ingredients
Organic oranges, bananas, ground almond, baking soda, salt, honey, chocolate, coconut oil, lemon juice, eggs and ground cinnamon.

Whole Orange Cake (with a little Chocolate)

Makes 9" inch

Whole Orange Cake (with a little Chocolate)

Ingredients

  • 200g ground almonds
  • 1 level teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 very small pinch finely ground salt
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tablespoon of coconut oil, melted
  • 2 whole organic oranges
  • 1/2 lemon, juiced
  • 6 very ripe bananas
  • 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
  • 2 generous dessertspoons runny honey
  • 35g dark chocolate (I used Green & Black’s Maya Gold)
  • dessicated coconut for decorating

Instructions

  1. Heat the oven to 180 C – I usually melt the coconut oil in the heating oven.
  2. Mash the banana with a fork.
  3. Wash the oranges well. Cut the top and bottom off them and discard. Then chop the rest of the orange into small segments, making sure to remove any pips. Add the segments to the blender and blend well. You don’t want to have any large piece of orange skin, they should be sliced pretty thinly after blending.
  4. Add the mashed bananas and lemon juice to the oranges and blend again.
  5. With the blender still on, pour in the 2 eggs (minus shell, obviously) in through the top and follow with the liquid coconut oil.
  6. Blend in the cinnamon. Taste and add honey until you have the proper level of sweetness (and there should be no bitter skin taste left when you have added enough honey) – about 2 generous dessertspoons.
  7. In a bowl mix the ground almonds, baking soda and salt well together and then add in the fruit mix. Stir in well.
  8. Line the bottom of a 9″ cake tin with grease proof paper, grease tin and paper with coconut oil. Pour in the cake batter.
  9. Bake the cake in the oven until it is springy in texture and when you stick a skewer of fork in it it comes out clean.
  10. Allow to cool completely, turn out on a plate, melt the chocolate and spread over the top and sprinkle over some dessicated coconut.
http://twimii.com/recipes/whole-orange-cake-with-a-little-chocolate/

orange-in-blender
Choose very sweet oranges because their peel seems to be less bitter. I think this is more important that the peel being “thin”.
out-of-oven
Straight from the oven and smelling gorgeous.
cake on a plate
Allow it to cool completely, use a spatula to make sure the sides are all free of the tin, then turn out on a plate.
cover-with-chocolate
Spread the melted chocolate over the top
sprinkle coconut on top
And then sprinkle over some coconut. – I did this just for the photos, to be honest.
have-a-slice
Lovely with a cup of black tea.
slice-of-cake
A slice of whole orange cake – with just a little bit of chocolate.