CANDIED ORANGE BROWN SUGAR CAKE

citrus till I die

Welcome to The Late Plate, where I share with you the recipes I am cooking at home in my warehouse. I live communally with six other people, we each pay £25 a week into a kitty and that collectively pays for all of our weekly food costs. One person cooks dinner each night of the week for everyone else, so that every night of the week there is a delicious dinner that will feed us all. The food we eat is largely vegetarian, seasonal, healthy and affordable, and I can’t wait to share some of those recipes with you here!

Photo by Safia Shakarchi

It’s citrus season and I could not be happier about it. Oranges and tangerines have such a strong connection to the festive season for me, and I can’t help but think that that is largely down to the 1994 version of Little Women (anyone else’s favourite Christmas film that’s not a Christmas film?) I relish the opportunity to work a tangerine into almost any occasion between the start of November and the end of December; as a table decoration, a snack, dessert, a pomander and most recently, to make this cake. It’s a great option if you are catering for any dairy free or plant based friends this festive season, as this cake is naturally vegan. It’s also just a great option for a morning morale boost as we descend into the dark days of winter. A slice of this orange cake, with a bitter cup of black coffee in the morning, is a great start to any day, but on a dark cold Thursday in November, its powers are limitless.

a recent tangerine laden dinner

CANDIED ORANGE BROWN SUGAR CAKE

The key to candying the orange slices to the perfect consistency lies in slicing them to the perfect thickness. You want them pretty thin, but still able to hold their shape in a full circle, we are talking a matter of 2-3mm. But regardless of the thickness of the slices, you want the white pith to have turned paler and almost translucent, before layering into your tin. Then once baked, you have a perfectly chewy, caramelised hat on an already good cake. The sponge is a brown sugar vanilla number that adds to the deep caramel notes and is pillow soft. It has Jaffa Cake energy, and if chocolate orange is your jam, you could easily go one step further and melt some dark chocolate to be drizzled over the finished cake. Unfortunately chocolate orange has never been a flavour combination that’s done much for me, so I haven’t endorsed that addition in the recipe below, but if you experiment, please let me know how it goes!

Stay toasty, cosy and bake this cake x

Photography by Safia Shakarchi

Serves 6-8

Ingredients: 

2 oranges, very thinly sliced into half moons, end pieces discarded.

140g caster sugar 

140ml water 

1 used vanilla pod (if you don’t have this 1 tsp of vanilla paste) 

265ml oat milk 

1.5 tsp Apple Cider Vinegar

300g brown sugar

190ml vegetable oil 

2 tsp vanilla paste

285g plain flour

100g polenta

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp bicarb 

0.5 tsp salt 

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180c.

2. Add the caster sugar, water,  vanilla pod and thinly sliced oranges to a pot over a medium high heat. Cut a circle of greaseproof paper to fit your pot, with a hole in the middle to allow for steam to escape, this will keep the oranges submerged while they are in the pan. Bring to the boil, then reduce and simmer whilst you make the cake. 

3. To make the cake, in a large mixing bowl whisk together the oat milk, apple cider vinegar, brown sugar, vegetable oil and vanilla paste.

4. In another large bowl whisk together the plain flour, polenta, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt.

5. Combine the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients and mix until well combined. 

6. By now the oranges should have cooked enough so that the pith has gone from bright white to a more translucent yellow colour. 

7. Line and grease a 9” cake tin and then begin laying your orange slices in the bottom of the pan. You can go for any pattern here, I like to arrange them in horizontal overlapping lines, left to right, making sure the orange skin is touching the edge of the tin, rather than the flesh of the fruit.

8. Once you have used all the orange pieces and the bottom of the tin is covered, pour a tablespoon of the remaining orange syrup over the fruit, save the rest for later. 

9. Pour the cake batter into the tin and bake for 50 minutes, or until a skewer inserted comes out clean. 

10. Leave the cake to cool in the tin completely, before turning out upside down so that the orange slices sit on top and glaze with a little more of the syrup.

11. This cake is great eaten on it’s own, especially at breakfast with a cup of bitter coffee, but it’s also great as a pudding with a dollop of creme fraiche.