Poundcake with oranges

My friend had this recipe for a cake made with natural orange juice and orange slices on top. The recipe is in Romanian, and I will try my best to translate it for you. Because you should try it the next time you want something different.

The recipe was recently found at the bottom of a drawer - it was being kept VERY safe as you can tell [aka we had no idea where it was]. I was cleaning that closet and the recipe resurfaced. yay! I don't have much to say at this point, so let's see what this cake is all about!

INGREDIENTS

 For the batter:

• 175 grams [real] butter
• 175 grams [caster] sugar
• 2 eggs [beaten]
• 225 grams all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 oranges [peel and juice] - see below

• 175 grams almonds [grounded] - I substituted with some almond essence
• a pinch of salt

For the syrup:

• 9 oranges
• 100 grams [caster] sugar
• 150 ml water

METHOD

Making the batter:

[disclaimer] the recipe said to mix all the ingredients at once. i didn't do that, because i know the consistency differs depending on how you mix them. so i will tell you how i mixed my ingredients. please use a mixer, and not a hand beater like i did [the cake turned out fine, just look at the pictures, but i don't think the ingredients ere mixed as they should have been.

1. Preheat the oven, prepare your baking tray, and make sure to have your butter at room temperature - it ill work faster this way.

2. Beat your butter and sugar together until you have a creamy looking mixture. My hand beater didn't manage to get the right consistency, luckily this didn't matter much in the end.

3. Add your beaten eggs, salt, baking powder, and orange juice and mix. Mine looked like this:

4. Add your flour, orange peel, and almonds and mix. This is what I had in my bowl at the end:

5. Throw in the oven on medium heat till it's well done. Mine took about 40 minutes. I use a gas stove and oven, and this means I cook and bake with fire. I have 8 heat settings, from 1 [lowest] to 8 [highest] - I can make pizza on settings 6 to 7. I usually cook [in the oven] using the setting 3 or 2, even 1 - I feel the heat is too strong at 3. I baked this cake at setting 2.

Making the syrup!

1. Use a small pot. Place the sugar, water and the juice from 6 oranges in it, and on a small fire [low heat].

2. Mix until the sugar dissolves.

3. Leave it on the fire for 10-15 min, WITHOUT stirring. When it's done, you'll have less juice [syrup] left in the pot.

Assembling!

• Peel your remaining 3 oranges and slice them.
• Place your cake on something to cool down, for some 10 min. [I left mine in the tray, you'll see why]
• Take a fork and pierce the surface of the cake a few times, in different places.
• Pour your syrup over the cake [if the cake is in the tray, this step is less messy]
• Place your orange slices on top of the cake.

My friend can testify this was moist, flavored, and out of ordinary delicious! Much better than any other cake I baked before. I must admit, this time I too liked the texture - I'm picky in this regard.

© Charly Cross 2013 - present. All rights reserved.