I like baking – once upon a time I baked every Friday – a fruit loaf, two batches of biscuits, Peanut Brownies, Anzac Biscuits or Shortbread, and a cake. Chocolate, Fruit, Madeira, you name it.
Now I don’t bake every Friday or care about which day of the week it is but every now and then I make a cake.
This is an Orange Coconut cake – most of you will be familiar with it. It’s the one where you take a whole orange (take the pips out first), put it into a bowl, skin and all, add the other ingredients and hey presto, after time of wonder in the oven, you have a cake.
‘You put the whole orange in? Skin and all?’
Yes, skin and all.
The first time I read the recipe I didn’t believe it either but I’ve made it a few times now (understatement) and everyone loves it.
I’ve made a couple of changes to the original recipe and here is my version.
Orange Coconut Cake
1 orange
One and a half cups of sugar
3 eggs
1 cup flour
i teaspoon baking powder
1 cup desiccated coconut
150g butter, melted
Method
Set oven to 180 C.
Grease and line an average-sized cake tin, square or round doesn’t matter. I like square because it’s easier to cut slices.
Halve orange and remove any pips.
Place in food processor, mix until puréed or finely chopped. Add sugar and eggs, blend to combine, add flour, baking powder, melted butter and mix. Pour mixture into prepared tin and bake 35-40 minutes or until golden and spring to the touch. Cool in tin on tray. When cool ice with your usually icing mix and scatter a little coconut on top.
ps – just in case you wondered, the little dark bits on the front of the cake are crumbs from when I pulled it out of its baking paper to ice. A bit of the mixture had splattered on the edge of the paper when I poured it in and of course got more cooked (read browned) than the rest. I’m such an inept photographer I didn’t notice till too late. The thought of going through the whole drama of taking the photo again was too much, so I left it, crumbs and all…
