blood orange bundt cake

blood orange bundt cake

• 2 Oct 2022

Helen Goh recently featured her favourite orange cake recipe on Instagram. As you know I love all things blood orange, so I found the recipe online then adapted Helen's recipe a little to create this blood orange bundt cake which I topped with a blood orange flavoured glace icing and a few strands of candied blood orange rind.

The recipe uses a whole orange which is boiled then pureed. Of course you can boil the orange in a saucepan for an hour + but I speed up the process in the microwave. 

Here's the recipe for you which makes a small bundt or a 17cm cake. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup, a 20ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional oven so if you have a fan-forced oven you may need to reduce the temperature by 20°C. 

 

Blood orange bundt cake

Ingredients

1 blood orange

170g plain flour

1¼ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp bicarb soda

pinch salt

100g unsalted butter, at room temperature

150g caster sugar

2 large eggs, at room temperature

60ml milk

40ml blood orange juice

Icing

10g unsalted butter, melted

90g (1/2 cup) icing sugar, sifted

Pinch salt

1-2 tbsp blood orange juice 

Optional - orange rind, fresh or candied to decorate

Method

Pierce the skin of the orange in a few places then put the orange in a microwave safe bowl with 1 tsp of water. Lightly cover the bowl, then microwave on high for 4 minutes or until the orange is completely soft (use a small knife with a sharp point to check; it should penetrate the orange without too much resistance).

When cool enough to handle, cut the orange into roughly 8 pieces, removing any seeds. Place the orange pieces in a food processor and process to a fine puree, then scrape into a small bowl. My orange yielded 135g of puree. You can do this step up to 3 days ahead; store the puree in the fridge until it's needed or it can be frozen. 

 

Preheat the oven to 180°C conventional. Grease and flour a small bundt pan and set to one side. 

 

Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt into a medium bowl. Combine the butter and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer and beat with the paddle attachment on medium speed for about 3-5 minutes (the mixture won't be entirely creamy since there's proportionally more sugar than butter). Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well between each addition. Add the orange puree and mix on low speed for a few seconds to combine, then add one third of the flour mix, followed by half of the milk.

Maintaining a low speed, mix for a few seconds, then repeat with another third of the flour and the remaining milk. Remove the bowl from the mixer and fold through the remaining third of the flour with a spatula before folding through the orange juice. 

 

Spoon the batter into the prepared cake tin and place in the oven. Bake for about 45 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool for 15 minutes and then turn the cake out to cool completely. 

Icing

In a small bowl, combine the butter, icing sugar and salt and sufficient orange juice to make a thick icing. Place a piece of greaseproof paper under the cake rack, and then drizzle the icing over the cooled cake. Let the icing set for a few minutes before decorating with some citrus peel. When the icing has set, transfer the cake to a serving plate.

As you would expect from a Helen Goh, the cake was delightful, perfumed with orange with a fine crumb and was a big hit at work.

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen. 

Bye for now, Jillian