No matter what kind of fruit I buy, it seems like the kids eat all but a handful of them and then lose interest. I need a fallback plan for fruit. Apples turn into applesauce, bananas get frozen for banana bread or banana swirl, and oranges…
Oranges, it turns out, become cake.
I started with this GF recipe from Nigella Lawson. It’s lovely, it’s almond-y… and it wasn’t what I wanted today. For whatever reason, I wanted to boil the oranges with a cinnamon stick and use the boiling liquid as well as the orange pulp. So I did – I boiled 6 clementines with a cinnamon stick for a few hours, which made my house smell amazing. Then I pulled off the little hard flower pieces from the boiled oranges, checked for seeds and found none, and puréed the whole mess in the blender, giving me about 2.5-2.75 cups of purée. I used that in a recipe intended for pumpkin bread, skipped the nutmeg and ginger, and added frozen cranberries.
Cranberry Orange Bundt Cake
- 6 whole clementines
- 1 cinnamon stick
- Water to cover
Bring to a boil. Turn down to a simmer and cook partly covered 2-3 hours until the water is bright orange and the clementines are very soft.
Allow to cool and then purée in a blender. It should be about the consistency of canned pumpkin purée (maybe a little thinner) and 2.5-2.75 cups total.
- 4 eggs
- 300g sugar
Whisk eggs and mix in sugar and orange purée
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp salt
- 450 g flour
- 8 oz frozen cranberries
Mix dry ingredients and stir into wet. Stir in cranberries to evenly distribute.
- 1/2 cup butter (or other oil)
Melt butter in a Bundt pan and swirl around (or use a neutral oil and swirl around.
Pour in the batter and stir gently to mix some of the butter into the batter.
Bake at 350°F for 75 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean from near the center post of the pan. Allow to cool 5-10 minutes in the pan and then invert on a plate or platter.
Eat as-is or serve with whipped cream or ice cream.