Blood orange cut in half

One of my favourite things to make using blood oranges is a Blood Orange Syrup Cake. This cake is drenched with orange syrup while still warm, resulting in a lovely fragrant and moist cake. Blood oranges can be substituted for whatever citrus fruit you have lying around. I have made this cake with lemons and mandarins with success. I am sure that you could also use limes if you were feeling adventurous.

I like to bake this cake in a German Bundt Pan, as it results in a festive, decorative looking cake – perfect for afternoon tea with friends or a dinner party dessert. I picked up my German Bundt Pan at my local Op Shop for about $4.  A round cake pan would work just as well though.

The recipe below is loosely based on David Herbert’s Lemon Syrup Cake from The Really Useful Cookbook.

Blood Orange Syrup Cake

Ingredients

For the Cake:

• 250 g unsalted butter, softened at room temperature and diced
• 1 Blood Orange, finely grate the zest and put aside and then juice the remaining orange
• 250g caster sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 275g self raising flour, sifted
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 cup natural yoghurt
• 1/4 cup milk
  

For the Orange Syrup:

• 2 Blood Oranges, finely grate the zest and put aside and then juice the remaining oranges
• 3/4 cup caster sugar
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 cinnamon stick

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Slather the  Bundt tin in butter – as you want the cake to turn out cleanly, so you don’t lose any of the decorative effect. (As you will see from the photo below, my cake turned out slightly imperfect – I blame The Brooding Architect being stingy with the butter!)
2. With a hand held electric mixer, beat the butter, 2 Tablespoons orange zest and sugar until pale and fluffy. This should take about 6 or 7 minutes.
3. Add the eggs one at a time, adding a tablespoon of the flour after each addition.
4. Using a metal spoon or spatula, fold through the remaining flour and baking powder. Once combined, add the juice of one orange juice, yoghurt and milk.
5. Spoon into the prepared tin and bake for about 5o minutes, or until the cake is golden brown on top and firm to touch.
6. While the cake is cooking, prepare the orange syrup. To make the syrup add the zest and juice of 2 oranges, as well as the sugar, cinnamon stick and water to a saucepan. Cook over medium heat for approximately 15 minutes, until the sugar has dissolved and the syrup begins to thicken. After 15 minutes take off the heat and allow to cool. Remove the cinnamon stick.
7. Once the cake is cooked, remove from the oven and poke holes over the top with a skewer or tooth pick. Carefully spoon half of the warm orange syrup on top of the cake and allow to cool in the tin.
8. Once the cake is cool, turn upside down. Pour the remaining orange syrup on top just before serving.
9. Serve with large mugs of tea.

Blood Orange Syrup Cake - If you squint, you can just make out the jar of orange syrup on the left. The syrup is poured on the cake just before serving.

I whipped up a batch of these savoury little treats for a recent Red Wine Club meeting. These biscuits are perfect for after works drinks, as you can pre-prepare the mixture, freeze it as a log and then cut off slices and bake as you require – very 1950s domestic goddess. All you need is a drinks trolley stocked with gin and green olives to complete the scene.

This recipe comes from ‘The Really Useful Cookbook’

Ingredients

• 200g plain flour, sifted
• 175g unsalted butter, chilled and diced
• 2 teaspoons chopped chives (or baby leeks if you happen to pick the wrong herbs in the dark like me!)
• 50g freshly grated parmesan
• 125g cheddar, finely grated
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• Pinch of salt (I like Mount Zero Pink Lake Salt if you can find it)

Method

1. Place the flour, butter, cheddar, parmesan, lemon juice, chives and salt in a food processor and process until the mixture comes together in a ball.
2. Place the mixture on a large sheet of baking paper, then roll into a log about 30cm long with a 5cm diameter. Twist the ends to seal. Chill for about 3o minutes.
3. Chill for 30 minutes, then remove from the fridge and roll the log on the bench top a few times to refine the cylinder shape. (I forgot this step and my biscuits still turned out fine – although a little more rustic and oblong looking).
4. Return to the fridge for at least 2 hours, until the mixture has set very firm.
5. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees celsius and line a baking paper with baking paper.
6. Unwrap the chilled, set dough log and cut into thin (3-4 millimetre) slices. Place slices on the prepared baking trays and bake for 1o to 15 minutes, until the biscuits are just starting to turn golden brown around the edges. (I found 12 minutes was the perfect baking time in my electric, fan forced oven).
7. Cool on the baking baking tray for 2 to 3 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
8. Enjoy the finished product with your favorite tipple. Great with a cold cider or beer.

The concept of the Red Wine Club is simple – bring a bottle (or two, or three) of a drop you are keen to try as well a plate of food to add to the pot-luck style lunch. Given that none of us actually know a lot about the specifics of red wine – apart from the fact that we like to drink a lot of it – the Red Wine Clubs is really just an excuse to get together for a long, boozy lunch with friends.

The inspiration behind red wine club

After a few prompting emails from The Organiser, the time and place for the inaugural meeting of the Red Wine Club was set.

The Brooding Architect and I had a few (okay 36) bottles of wine floating around from our recent trip to the Yarra Valley, so ended up choosing the following bottles to take along:

• Train Trak Sojourn Cabernet-Shiraz 2008 – Under $20 -  Label Reads: A medium bodied wine produced from 55% of Cabernet Sauvignon and 45% of Shiraz from our Yarra Glen vineyard. Lifted cherry notes and spicy flavours are supported by well round tannins. Produced at low cropping levels and matured in French and American barriques for twenty months.
• Train Trak Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 – $20 to $25 – Label Reads: Bright crimson with purple hues, the wine shows aromas of berry fruit leading to a full bodied palate. Blackcurrant notes upfront end with great length and fine grain tannins. Produced at low cropping levels, matured in French barriques (30% new) for eight months, then in older barriques for further six months before final blending. Rich and earthy.
• Punt Road Pinot Noir 2005 - $20 to $25 – Label Reads: Light to medium bodied with lively red cherry, plum and spice flavours. The palate has a lingering finish and a fine, soft tannin structure.

While technically outside of the red wine category, we also brought along some Punt Road pear and apple ciders. The Punt Road ciders are crisp and refreshing – a far cry from the sickly sweet Strongbows I remember drinking as a 17 year old. A key point of difference with the Punt Road ciders is that they are fermented using table quality (that is eating quality) apples and pears. These Cheddar Biscuits, from a recipe in David Herbert’s ‘The Really Useful Cookbook’ were a great nibbly to accompany the cider and kick off the festivities:

To mop up the red wine, we brought along some Rustic Ricotta Meatballs in a Tomato and Red Wine Sauce. This recipe tends to change each time I make it, but it basically consists of pork and beef minced, combined with fresh ricotta.

Of the wines we took along, the unanimous favorite was the very moderately priced Train Trak Cab Sav. The Train Trak website sells this wine for $23, but you can pick it up at the Cellar Door for about $19 if you buy it by the case. Also, if wine medals mean anything to you (they don’t to me), the Train Trak Cab Sav picked up the Bronze Medal at the Royal Melbourne Wine Show 2008, the Bronze Medal at the Yarra Valley Wine Show 2007 and has a 4 glass rating from THE Australian Wine Guru, James Halliday. 

The Red Wine Club is heading to the Mornington Peninsula weekend,  to get a much needed crash course in wine tasting and to stock up on a few new bottles to replace the 7 or 8 consumed last weekend. Stay tuned for Meeting No. 2…

CERES Food Connect is an organic food delivery service, where you purchase direct from the farmer. All of the fruit and vegetables are sourced locally and the contents of the produce box changes each week, depending on what is available. Each week, in Master Chef Style, a ‘mystery box’ of ingredients is delivered to your City Cousin pick-up point. If you want to know more check out this link.

Despite only living in a 2 person household, The Brooding Architect and I get the mixed medium fruit and vegetable box. The CERES website indicates that this particular box is suitable for a family of 3 – 4 people. I blame my Singaporean-Chinese mother, for my compulsion to hoard food and over feed people. This is what a typical week’s stash looks like:

Despite our best efforts, The Brooding Architect and I always seem to have a glut of fruit left in the fruit bowl at the end of the week. Lately, the key culprit has been bananas.

An easy way to use up an over-supply of bananas is baking banana bread. For unorganised people like me, who never seems to have time for breakfast in the morning despite starting work at the very civilised time of 9am, banana bread is one of those things you can easily snack on while checking the daily inundation of emails. It also freezes really well when (1) you just can’t face breakfast of banana bread; or (2) your friends refuse to accept any more ‘gifts’ of banana bread.

Perfect with a cup of spicy chai tea

This is my tried and tested recipe for banana bread – modified from the recipe in David Herbert’s Complete Perfect Recipes . I love David’s recipes because they are so  easy to master. Then, once you have mastered the base recipe, it is easy to modify it to suit your own personal tastes. This recipe can be mixed together with a hand mixer, or if you are ‘time poor’ (read lazy) like me thrown into a food processor all at once.

Ingredients:

• 1 ½ cups plain flour
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 125g unsalted butter – softened to room temperature (if I am organised I love using the Warrnambool Butter from the ‘Curds & Whey’ Stall at the Queen Victoria Markets)
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs lightly beaten
• 2 very large (or 3 small) very ripe bananas
• ¼ cup natural or Greek yogurt
• ¼ cup milk
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg (optional)
• Handful of chopped walnuts (optional)

Method:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius.
2. Grease your loaf tin and line the sides with baking paper.
3. In a bowl sift together the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate soda, salt and nutmeg.
4. In a separate bowl, use an electric mixer to beat together the butter and sugar for around 5 minutes, or until light and fluffy. Gradually add the beaten eggs, mixing well after each addition.
5. Mash up the bananas with a fork and add to the butter mixture, use the electric to combine.
6. Add the sifted dry ingredients, alternatively with the yoghurt and milk, beating well after each addition.
7. Add the chopped walnuts and mix thoroughly.
8. Spoon the mix into your prepared loaf tin and bake for 55 to 60 minutes, or until the top of the bread is firm and a deep brown colour. A skewer or fork inserted into the centre should come out clean. Allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.
9. Serve with a mug of your favorite tea.  The finished product can also be wrapped in alfoil and frozen for up to two months.