Eggless Orange Almond Pecan Cranberry Chocolate Chip Pound Cake … delicious mouthful!

Eggless Orange Almond Pecan Cranberry Chocolate Chip Pound Cake … this pound cake is everything good, actually JUST TOO GOOD! I used to bake a really nice orange pound cake when I used to bake with eggs. It had a wonderful crumb and each bite was moist and satisfying. One bite of this eggless pound cake and the memories just came tumbling in. It was exactly as I remembered, ONLY BETTER!!

Addictive, bursting with flavour, rich , indulgent, moist, great dense crumb, sliced beautifully, kept well, travelled well too. It’s not often that you find so much good in a single cake but this one certainly ticked all the boxes. And oh my, the pecans, cranberries and chocolate chips together do create some sort of magic in there.

There’s always been an endless charm about the quintessential pound cake, a connection to the years gone by. When I began baking, a pound cake was one of the earliest things I’d bake on repeat, the history behind this classic European tea cake making the recipe simple to remember … a pound of flour, a pound of eggs, a pound of sugar, a pound of butter it sang in my head!

I used to write a blog on the Times of India eons ago under the pen name of The Rabid Baker and this particular Wholewheat Coffee Chocolate Chip Pound Cake was a very popular recipe, one that I baked often, perhaps too often. Another favourite was the Wholewheat Almond Buttermilk Pound Cake which tasted really lovely topped with lightly sweetened cream ad fresh strawberries.

Other times I’d bake a chocolate pound cake or an orange pound cake that I would always have ready when the kids came home from school. At the time, we travelled to the US often and I carried back a few basic bundt tins and they were perfect to bake a pound cake in.

Another recipe was the Blueberry Lime Buttermilk Pound Cake that I baked occasionally as a very special treat since anything blueberry was hard to come by back in the day. Not so now, since blueberries in every form are very easily available here now – fresh, frozen, dried, dehydrated …

The years went by and my favourite pound cake got forgotten because I stopped baking with eggs. Then last year I made an Eggless Pistachio Cranberry Loaf Cake, essentially a pound cake, and I was smitten! I feel in love with the gentle flavours, the rich delicate crumb, and addictive indulgent taste.

Natural orange as a flavour in cakes is something I truly love, something so easily achievable. This winter, the local bazaar has been flooded with carts of fresh, juicy oranges, called ‘kinnow/keenu‘ locally, a high yield mandarin orange hybrid. I thought instantly of the Eggless Strawberry Orange Tart Cake that I had made a while ago that was bursting with fresh flavour. I definitely had ORANGE on my mind and I wanted to try something new.