Gâteau à l’Orange … Orange you glad I made this?

Deeba @ PAB

14 years ago

“Orange is the happiest color.”

Frank Sinatra

Tweeting always has sweet surprises on the deck! The wonderful and talented SaffronBerry girl, found this orange cake when the Persian in her became obesessed about finding an orange cake recipe. As she said, “You’ll know we’re a bit obsessive and weird about our citrus fruit. We hoard it, display it, eat it, drink it, preserve it, dry it, cook it, and I’m sure we’d bake it too if there were a tradition like that of Western baking in Iran, heck we’d probably wear oranges and lemons if we could find a way to.“

I absolutely adored the way she summed up her citrus emotions, and now I think I might have some Persian DNA in my blood too. I too am very obsessive about citrus everything, and currently have a jar of tangerines and limes being preserved out of an Ottolenghi recipe! Recently made a load of Bitter Orange Marmalade, Dried Apricot, Pistachio and Orange Biscotti and Orange Pastry Cream Tartlets with Candied Tangerines (last 2 recipes yet to be posted).

As Hilda rightly said, the gateau almost feels like a cheesecake without cheese, it’s very light, and yet it’s also dense in that the egg whites don’t give it volume, they just prevent it from being puck-like.

I LOVE ORANGE!! Thank you for this great gateau recipe Hilda. I absolutely adore fruit in bakes, citrus even more. The cake was FAB … even though the story of my life remains the same. Yes indeed, power cut again; else the cake would have been much lighter. Still had a beautifully light crumb, and I poured fresh orange juice over it S L O W L Y. The gateau absorbed it all, but for about 2-3 tbsps.

It’s a wonderful recipe and I will be making it again soon. Served a few slices with homemade fresh mascarpone. It was drooliciously good both ways. Was happy to have an opportunity to use my oven dried orange slices for the top…tee hee! Even sprinkled some orange sugar on top right after pouring the juice.

I’ve made a jar of orange sugar by rubbing orange zest into vanilla sugar, and letting it dry in a very very low oven. I store it in a jar with a vanilla bean, and the flavour matures beautifully over time. It’s got a slight bitter tinge to taste, but is nice on top of bakes and in cookies. Got the idea from basil sugar from Ilva @ Lucillian, and it’s also something Alice Medrich uses in her recipes like Citrus Olive Oil Cakes etc.

Gâteau à l’Orange

Adapted from here
4 oranges
Zest of 1 orange
100 g of softened butter
100 g sugar
150 g flour
3 eggs, separated
11/2 tsp baking powder
1 Tbsp rhum
1 Tbsp orange essence (or Cointreau)
1 pinch of salt
Butter (to grease the pan)

Method:
Heat the oven to 170C.

Grease a 6″ cake pan, and line the bottom with parchment

In a bowl, beat the sugar and softened butter together.

Add the yolks one by one to the butter and sugar mixture, taking care to mix each one thoroughly before adding the next one and beat until you obtain a smooth batter.

Add the rhum and the orange essence/Cointreau and mix again.

Mix the flour and baking powder together and add it to the batter by “raining it in”. Mix well.

Cut and juice the oranges. Pour half of the resulting juice in the batter, add the zest and mix.

Beat the whites until firm with the pinch of salt. Add them delicately to the batter.

Pour the batter into the pan and bake for an hour, checking the coloration from time to time. It will be dark orange when done.

Pour the other half of the juice into the cake while it’s still warm. Take care not to pour it too fast and not to let the cake cool too much before you do so. You may find that if you don’t get the timing right, your whole cake will not have juice in it (as in it may have two different textures and have a visible line halfway down where the juice stopped penetrating).

Serves 8.

♥ Thank you for stopping by ♥

This delicious comforting citrusy gateau is off to Sweet Comforts: Sugar High Friday #61 being hosted this month by Kate @ A Merrier World.

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