It’s spring but for some reason, I’m finding myself reluctant to say goodbye to the winter this year. Well, at least to her smashingly bright, fruit and veg, and in particular, to Sicilian blood oranges. I seek them out as I am totally under their spell.
And, it seems I am not the only one. A while back, I asked a friend of my son’s what he was looking forward to about visiting his parent’s family in Sicily. He replied – i nonni, le spiagge, e le arance – the grandparents, the beaches, and the oranges. Just like that – a teenager placed oranges in the top 3 on the Sicily scoreboard. Considering the glut of mind-blowingly good, pastries, gelato, granita, salty snacks, cheeses, breads, pasta etc available in Sicily, I was thrown by oranges making the grade. But there you have it – something as unfussy as orange, can be magic.
The Sicilian blood oranges that appear in our local mercato, are usually of the Tarocco, Moro or Sanguinello variety. Today, it was a bag of Sanguinello beauties that I scored. Half of them I juiced, with the other half, I made cake.
I followed a winning recipe of Emiko Davies, a fabulous, Japanese-Australian cook based in Tuscany. In her blog post, Emiko linked in her original source, that of Julia from ‘Ostro’ and the Tuscan nonna from which the recipe came – check out the recipe trail *here*.
The cake, was aromatic, big on flavour, and thanks to the olive oil – moist to the point of being a little puddingish. Emiko’s recipe adds rosemary to the batter – a genius move for the contrast it adds in flavour, colour and perfume … yummmm.
Like Emiko, I also added a simple topping of semi-candied, blood orange slices – which made the whole thing look particularly decadent, and bumped up the texture complexity. My orange slices were possibly on the too-thick side, plus unlike the ruby-red-on-the-inside-oranges that I had used for the cake itself, the ones I had put aside for the topping, were tame in colour terms. A more striking finish with blood, *blood*, red orange slices would have been particularly outstanding, but I do love the unpredictability of these fruits. What you see, is not what you get – it’s all part of the blood orange magic, right?
Blood Orange and Rosemary Cake ~ Torta alle Arance Rosse e Rosmarino
*Recipe by Emiko Davies
- 2 blood oranges, zest and juice
- 300g sugar
- 3 eggs
- 300g extra virgin olive oil
- 300g milk
- 300g plain flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- pinch of salt
- 1-2 large sprigs of rosemary, leaves finely chopped
Preheat the oven to 180ºC, butter and line a 24cm cake tin.
Place the sugar in a bowl and using your fingertips, rub the orange zest through until fragrant. Add the eggs, beating until thick and creamy. Add the milk, olive oil and orange juice and stir.
In a separate, medium sized bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and rosemary.
Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture and slowly pour in the wet ingredients, stirring gently as you go. Mix until just combined. Pour mixture into the cake tin and bake for 45-50 minutes, or until golden, and a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Semi-candied blood orange slices
- 1 blood orange, sliced into 3mm thick slices
- 100g sugar
- ¼cup blood orange juice
Place all ingredients in a small saucepan and simmer for about 15 minutes, or until the juice has thickened and the orange pieces are soft enough for a fork to easily pierce the skin but not falling apart. Allow to cool. Carefully arrange the orange slices over the baked, cooled cake and drizzle over the syrup.
