This is the cake recipe that Kate from foodies agenda shared with me when we talked recently, and I'm glad for many reasons that she chose this.
I don't have a sweet tooth, to start, but I do have a citrus tooth! I absolutely love citrus flavours, to eat, to look at, to smell.
Grapefruit and Wild Orange are two of my favourite essential oils (to put in the diffiuser or for my morning 'detox shower') and I always have a big bowl of limes as I use so many.
And of course, they just look so pretty with their gorgeous colours.
I'm also glad she chose this because I very, very rarely bake ... so whilst I'm usually confident cooking and can trust my sense of taste, baking feels very different. It always makes me nervous when I put the cake or pastry or whatever it is in the oven without feeling like I quite know what's going to come out!
This recipe is delicious - the cake is made with coconut oil and is very moist. It isn't too sweet and the flavours are fresh. I think it's a really elegant cake too.
There are only a couple of cakes I've ever made that I've then made again, and this has joined them.
I will definitely be making this one again!
If you're in Australia or the US, then I'd suggest you go straight to the original recipe as it's really simple and you'll be using measuring cups.
Here's the recipe on foodies agenda.
But I managed to get myself confused over a few things ... because I don't ever bake.
I also never use measuring cups - I had thought it was only an American measure.
Turns out (I did a bit of googling) that American cups are 240ml and Australian cups are 250ml. So not enough difference to affect the recipe and if you use either American or Australian measuring cups then just go ahead and make it.
I also found out that apparently we do have measuring cups in the UK and ours contain 220ml. The things I was reading then got way too technical for me and were advising how to convert volume to weight. Yes, exactly.
So what I did was measure out 250ml water and thought I'd pour it in a mug and just use roughly where it came up to for each measure. But then the water exactly filled a little teacup and so this little teacup is forever more going to be my Aus/US measuring cup.
My other concern was that - you guessed it - I've never used my coconut oil for baking and it's set completely solid and I imagine it needs to be liquid to measure it in a cup.
Problem solved by just putting the jar in some hot water for about ten minutes - coconut oil has a pretty low melting temperature.
All ready to go with my new-found knowledge of measuring cups and how to melt solid coconut oil!
Just sharing all this in case there's anyone else out there as unknowledgeable about baking as me.
Most people will have skipped over all this and already have cooked and be eating their cake by now I expect ...
On to the recipe itself, which is incredibly simple, especially as none of that off-putting creaming butter and sugar together - you just pour in coconut oil!
What you'll need:
1 cup demerera sugar
2 medium free range eggs
2 lemons, the zest of both + 2 tablespoons of juice
1 orange, the zest of half (I put in a little more than half) + 1 tablespoon of juice
1 pinch of salt
2 cups of self raising flour, sifted
1 cup of natural or Greek yogurt
3/4 cup coconut oil
Preheat the oven to 180 / Gas 4
In a large mixing bowl whisk together the eggs and sugar until light and airy and the sugar has dissolved. I used my electric whisk and it was done in seconds ...
Then you throw in the lemon and orange zest and juice (quantities in the ingredients list), followed by a pinch of salt and the sifted self-raising flour.
Fold in the yogurt. I'm never sure about folding but do know to be gentle with the mixture and only folding/combining the ingredients without over-mixing to try to keep the end result light.
Then gradually pour in the coconut oil little by little, again gently combining to keep the air in.
When it's all combined, Kate's instructions are to:
'Grease a 22cm springform cake tin or line with baking paper'.
Oops! Another non-baker's problem. I don't have a round or springform cake tin. So my choice was from a loaf tin and a 22cm square tin. I went with the square tin as think the loaf tin might have made the cake too dense and the middle might not have been cooked. So I greased that with a little butter and poured in the cake batter.
When I first read through the recipe, I'd been a bit worried that my cake batter wouldn't look right, but batter is exactly what it looked like! Started feeling quite excited about this, especially as the batter on it's own was delicious (yep, I scraped the bowl out).
Put the cake on the middle shelf and then the recipe says to bake for 30-35 mins until cooked all the way through and golden brown.
I don't know whether it's me or my oven (shouldn't be the oven which is a lovely steady-temperature-holding gas oven) but whenever I do bake a cake it always takes a LOT longer than the recipes say.
I tested it after 30 minutes by putting a sharp knife in, but it came out with batter still on the knife. And I kept testing it until 20 minutes later than the recommended time when I decided it was probably done.
Take the cake out of the oven and allow to cool a little before releasing from the tin - or tipping it out. You can see all the stab marks where I kept testing to see if was done!
But I didn't burn it and it came out of the tin so well, all in one lovely piece.
(Yes my 'cooling rack' is the grill pan)!
Next time I make it I'll cook it for even longer as mine was lovely on the outer sides but the middle was still a little doughy (although it still tasted really good).
Dust with icing sugar and grate over a little more zest before slicing and serving.
I'm really pleased with this! Perfect with a mid-morning coffee I'd say.
