Orange Ciambella with Orange Glaze
A ciambella is an Italian ring shaped cake, traditionally baked in a bundt mould. It’s also described as an Italian breakfast cake. Hmmm…maybe not for breakfast every day!
A ciambella is light, moist and so delicious. It cuts well with a great crumb and keeps well too.
My cake is full of the flavour of orange, incorporating puréed orange in the batter and orange juice in the glaze. It’s an olive oil and yoghurt cake, making it super easy to make. I use the food processor. You can purée the orange in the processor before making the cake. If you use an electric mixer, you will need to purée the orange first before making the cake.
1/2 orange, roughly chopped
200g caster sugar
3 free-range eggs
150ml light olive oil
200g Greek yoghurt
250g self aising flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
Orange glaze
Juice of 1/2 orange
150g icing sugar
Preheat the oven to 200°C, 180C fan. Grease and flour a 26cm bundt pan or ring mould or 22cm springform pan would be fine. Put the pan or mould into the fridge while you make the cake.
Put the chopped 1/2 orange into the bowl of a food processor and blitz until the orange is puréed. There may still be a few orange pieces in the batter, but they will be be blitzed when making the rest of the cake mix.
Add the caster sugar and mix with the puréed orange until well combined. Add the eggs and mix well. Put the olive oil and yoghurt in to the processor and blitz.
Add the flour, baking powder and salt. Process until just combined - don’t overmix. Take the pan/mould from the fridge and pour the batter into the pan/mould.
Bake for 30-35 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean. Cool in the pan/mould for 10 minutes before carefully turning out onto a wire rack.
To make the glaze, mix the orange juice with the icing sugar to form a thick but still runny icing. You may need to adjust the icing sugar to get the right consistency.
Using a palette knife, ice the top of the cake liberally with the glaze. Serve as is, or decorate with fresh orange slices. Delicious on the day, but will keep well for a couple of days too.