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Blood Orange Friands

Posted on July 29, 2017 by The quirk and the cool

 

 

Here's another recipe for friands, those delicious little cakes made with eggs whites only and ground almonds, very similar to the French financier.

This version features wonderful blood oranges, now available in Sydney, one of the joys of a beautiful bright winter! It's 21 degrees C on this sunny July day!

The recipe is really so versatile, you can add lots of different fruit to the basic recipe. Cherries, pears, raspberries and blueberries work well.

Ingredients

6 egg whites, beaten lightly

75g plain flour

240g icing sugar, sifted

125g almond meal

150g melted butter, cooled

Grated zest and juice of a blood orange

10 tablespoons icing sugar or enough to make a thick glaze.

Optional – some salted pistachio praline to decorate*

Slices of blood orange

Method

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C or 160 degrees C fan-forced. Lightly grease 12 friand molds.

Beat the egg whites until frothy with fork in a large mixing bowl.

Sift the flour and icing sugar into the bowl, stir in almond meal and then add the melted butter. Stir in the zest of the blood orange, and the juice of one half of the blood orange.

Spoon the mixture (approximately ¼ cup) into each of the molds.

Bake in preheated oven for 20  minutes until cooked through and golden brown or until a skewer is inserted into centre comes out clean. Sometimes the friands need a few more minutes in the oven to be nice and brown.

To make the glaze, mix the juice of the other half of the blood orange with the icing sugar. You may need to add more or less juice or more or less icing sugar to get the glaze to the right consistency to ice the friands.
Ice the friands with just enough glaze to coat the tops and perhaps to run down the sides a little.

*To make the salted pistachio praline, dissolve a couple of tablespoons of caster sugar in a small frying pan over a medium heat. Don't stir, or the sugar will crystallize. Once the dissolved sugar has turned to a deep toffee colour, pour the praline over a handful of salted pistachios on some baking paper. Once hard, bash the praline into fragments.

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Raspberry and Walnut Muffins and Blood Orange and Muscat Raisin Muffins

Posted on November 29, 2014 by The quirk and the cool

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I made my usual muffin recipe base to a make these breakfast/morning tea/afternoon tea treats. The base recipe comes from a much loved, much thumbed American cookbook The Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen, one of the best and most inventive vegetarian cookbooks I own.

Here is Molly’s website: http://www.molliekatzen.com/ and this is the website of the Moosewod Collective, with whom Molly was originally associated: http://www.moosewoodcooks.com/

I divided the mixture in half, adding frozen raspberries and chopped walnuts to one half, and some finely chopped blood orange and raisins soaked in muscat to the other.

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Ingredients – Base Mixture

1 and 3/4 cups plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bi-carbonate soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup oil
1 beaten egg
3/4 cup milk
2 tbs honey

Raspberry and Walnut  Mixture

1/4 cup frozen raspberries
1/4 cup chopped walnuts

Blood Orange and Muscat Raisin Mixture

A couple of slices of blood orange, blitzed in the food processor
1/4 cup raisins, soaked in a couple of tablespoons of liqueur muscat for half an hour or more (you don’t really need the muscat; I had some on hand and it worked well)

Method

Preheat oven to 170 degrees C. Line a 12 cup muffin tin with muffin papers. Expect to make at least 8 decent sized muffins, or more if they’re smaller.

Mix the dry ingredients for the base mixture with a spoon in a bowl until well combined. Divide into two bowls. In another bowl mix the oil, beaten egg, milk and honey.

For the raspberry muffins, add half the liquid ingredients to one bowl of dry ingredients, stirring until barely mixed. Gently fold in the raspberries and walnuts.

For the blood orange muffins, add the other half of the liquid ingredients to the second bowl of dry ingredients, stirring until barely mixed. Gently fold in the blood orange and raisins. Decorate the tops with blood orange segments if desired.

Spoon each mixture into the muffin papers.  Sprinkle the tops with a little demerara sugar for extra crunch. Bake for 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre of a muffin comes out clean.

Remove from the oven – eat  warm or cold.

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Blood Orange Upside Down Cake

Posted on September 27, 2014 by The quirk and the cool

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It’s late September, mid Spring in Sydney. Blood oranges are still available at the markets but not for much longer. This cake does blood oranges two ways – candied on the top of the cake, (which started off as the bottom) and whole oranges, skin and all, blitzed through the batter.

The occasion for cake was as a house warming present for a work colleague who has recently moved house  – to my street – in fabulous Rozelle.

The basic cake recipe is the same as for my blood orange mini cakes:

https://thequirkandthecool.com/2014/08/09/little-blood-orange-cakes-with-blood-orange-toffee/

Ingredients

2 + 2  blood oranges

200g  + 200g sugar

125g very soft butter

2 free range eggs

½ tsp vanilla essence

200g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

Method

Candied Blood Oranges

Finely slice 2 of the oranges, discarding the ends and keeping as many slices intact as you can.

Dissolve 200g of the sugar in 1/2 cup of water in a saucepan, and bring to the boil. Carefully place the orange slices in the syrup and simmer them until they are soft and sticky. Remove from the syrup using tongs. If the syrup is not reduced enough, cook it for a few minutes extra to thicken – but don’t let it go to toffee.

Cake

Preheat oven to 170 degrees C.

Grease a 20cm springform cake tin. Line the base with baking paper, cut slightly larger than the circle base, making sure the paper comes a little way up the sides of the tin. This is  as a precaution, in case the syrup leaks out of the tin.

Chop 2 of the blood oranges in quarters and remove each end. Blitz in the food processor until reasonably finely chopped – there should still be some small chunks in the mixture.

Add the butter and 200g of the sugar and blitz in the food processor. The mixture will look very curdled! Add the eggs and vanilla and blitz again, the mixture will still look very curdled!

Gently fold in the flour and baking powder, making sure not to over mix or the cake with toughen. The cake mixture will now look “normal”.

Place the candied orange slices on the paper base in the springform tin, as artistically as possible, remembering, as this is an upside down cake, that the bottom becomes the top.

Place the batter over the top of the slices. Gently tap the mixture to even it out. Bake for 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Remove from the oven and cool the tin on a wire rack. When the cake is cool (not cold), carefully turn upside down on a serving plate. Release the springform clasp, and carefully remove the ring. Even more carefully, take off the base and peel away the baking paper.

You should have a beautiful upside down cake with fruit intact! Brush the cake with the blood orange syrup, or you could serve the syrup on the side as a sauce.

Serve with whipped cream or sour cream or creme fraiche. I prefer the latter two as the cake is very sweet and needs to be offset by a little sourness.

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Blood Orange Mini Cakes with Blood Orange Toffee

Posted on August 9, 2014 by The quirk and the cool

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Blood oranges are in season now in August in Sydney, and there is almost a spring-like feeling in the air!

I love the colour and sweet juiciness of the fruit. They are so more exotic than other oranges.

I wanted to feature them in a cake, and decided to use my little cake molds with detachable bottoms. They’re a bit bigger than regular muffin molds and their straight sides make attractive cakes.

I featured blood oranges in the cake mixture, the buttercream and the toffee decoration.

The cake is simplicity itself – made in the food processor. I could call it the “curdled” cake as the mixture is completely curdled until you add the flour! Don’t worry, it all comes together in the end!

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Cakes

Ingredients

2 blood oranges

125g very soft butter

200g sugar

2 free range eggs

½ tsp vanilla essence

200g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

Method

Preheat oven to 170 degrees C.

Grease some little cake tins or muffin molds. You should get 6 – 8 cakes depending on the size of mold you use. Alternatively, grease a 20cm cake tin for one larger cake.

Chop the blood oranges in quarters and remove each end. Blitz in the food processor until reasonably finely chopped – there should still be some small chunks in the mixture.

Add the butter and sugar and blitz in the food processor. The mixture will look very curdled! Add the eggs and vanilla and blitz again, the mixture will still look very curdled!

Gently fold in the flour and baking powder, making sure not to over mix or the cake with toughen. The cake mixture will now look “normal”.

Fill the molds/ cake tin. Bake for 30 minutes for the smaller cakes or 45 minutes for the larger cake, or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Remove from the oven and cool in molds/tin before removing to a wire rack.

Buttercream Icing

Ingredients

100g softened butter

200g icing sugar

Juice of ½ blood orange

Method

Cream the butter, icing sugar and blood orange juice with an electric mixer or you can also use the food processor, to make a stiff but spreadable icing.

Blood Orange Toffee

Ingredients

3 tblsp caster sugar

Juice of ½ blood orange

Method

Heat the sugar and blood orange juice in a heavy based saucepan until the sugar dissolves. Bring to the boil without stirring for 10 minutes or until a spoonful of mixture cracks when you drop it in a glass of cold water. Pour onto baking paper on a baking tray to set; break into shards when cold.

Ice the cakes/cake with the buttercream icing and decorate with the toffee shards.

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