Christmas Cake Recipe: Buttery and Sticky Orange Cake | You've Got Meal!

Nice and simple recipe for buttery and moist cake with oranges and poppy seeds. Perfect Christmas or holiday cake with minimum effort.

This cake recipe is inspired by the classic Lemon Drizzle Cake. Oranges are great this time of the year and I wanted to take as much advantage as I could of their full flavor. It is as buttery as lemon drizzle cake, of course it uses oranges instead of lemons and, to take it to the next level, you add a delicious sticky orange syrup on top and some drunken orange slices.

For the cake/ sponge:

• 200 g butter
• 200 g powder sugar
• 3 eggs
• 300 g flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 50 g poppy seeds
• 200 ml milk
• 150 ml orange juice

Method:

1. In a bowl, beat the butter (at room temperature) with the powder sugar. I did it with a hand mixer.
2. Add the eggs and mix some more.
3. In a different bowl mix the dry ingredients: flour + baking powder + poppy seeds
4. Incorporate the flour mixture into the eggs and butter mixture.
5. Add the milk and the juice to the bowl and mix.
6. Line a round cake tin with detachable bottom with baking sheet (both the bottom and the sides).
7. Pour the batter into the cake tin and bake in a preheated oven, medium heat, for 30 minutes.

Syrup:

• 300 ml orange juice
• 200 g granulated sugar
• the zest from 1 orange
• 1 cinnamon stick

Method:

1. Put all the ingredients in a sauce pan.
2. Bring it to a simmer.
3. Let it simmer for at least 10 minutes, until it gets thicker. Beware that the syrup gets thicker when it gets cold.

For the oranges on top:

1. Heat up some rum (around 100 ml) in a sauce pan. No need for it to boil, just make it really hot.
2. Cut 2 oranges in slices. Try to remove as much white skin as you can while doing it.
3. Put the orange slices in the hot rum and let them soak and absorb the alcohol for 50-60 minutes.

To put the cake together:

1. While both the cake and syrup are warm, make tiny holes in the cake with a fork on all the surface and pour the syrup on top. 
2. The syrup will be absorbed and the cake will be soooo moist.
3. You can reserve some syrup for extra flavor for each slice. The syrup is also amazing cold, so don't worry.
4. When the cake is slightly colder and you have removed it from the tin, take the orange slices out of the rum and place them on top of the cake as desired.
5. Optional, sprinkle some powder sugar on top.

I hope you will find the result as rewarding as I did. I took some slices to work the next day and everybody loved it, they were surprised how much beautiful orange taste it had. I also want to mention that the cake is at its best when it is served after it had been refrigerated for 2-3 hours.

Happy December,

Thassos, Greece- Day 3

After going to Limenas in the previous day, we decided to relax completely for one day and just enjoy the beautiful beach and the sea. We had breakfast at the villa and headed straight for the beach. We had coffee with our feet buried in sand and it was magnificent. It was a super sunny day, we got tanned and played some water tennis or whatchamacalit.

There is a reason why Golden Beach is known for one of the best beaches in Thassos if not the best.  Even if you chose a different resort at least for one day you should try the amazing sand from Golden Beach.

The sand is just perfection and the beach is quite vast.  The only downside to Golden Beach is that maybe because it wasn’t such a  popular destination until recently it is not very developed as far as shopping opportunities and nightlife goes.  

The restaurants, or better said the taverns, are great, similar to the ones in other resorts or villages.

After our first session of natural tanning we went again at Vigli, not only for the view, but this time for some quick lunch also. We chose to share a pizza at the café bar to save some time that we would have spent waiting in the restaurant.  Everything was ok, of course we got to pet a cat after eating, I truly believe it helps with digestion, we had a beer each and headed back at the villa for a shower.  

The second part of the day we also spent at the beach until dinner time and there was no regret.

I have to say that in September, in the evening you might need a cardigan , but it was no colder than that. For dinner we went to a family tavern on the beach, but unfortunately I don’t remember the name.

We had some eggplant as a starter, fried and served with an amazing sauce, that they called garlic salad. This sauce was so amazing that it was something we had to try at home, as soon as we arrived. The eggplant was just fried and the garlic salad had Greek yogurt, olive oil, garlic, walnuts and olives or olive tapenade. Seriously now, the dip is amazing.

For the main course, I had some lobster salad, which was ok, but you can tell it wasn’t actually their specialty and my lovely husband, always craving for fresh fish had fresh tsipura on the grill.

Oh, and we drank Retsina wine which is ok, mainly because it is not that easy to find some nice wine in a casual tavern on a Greek Island. It’s fine and one good thing about it is that you can find it in restaurants in 500 ml bottles. For the rest of the vacation, retsina remained a good alternative considering that usually, when you ask for a glass of wine, you get sweet or semi-sweet wine which is not our favorite to be served during dinner.  

That was us for today.

Thank you for reading our rambling,

Thassos, Greece- Day 2

If it is just a bit cloudy you can spot the Athos Mountain from the beach

In our second day in Thassos we decided to go to the capital, Limenas or Thassos Town for some gift shopping. First we sun bathed a bit and drank our morning coffee on the beach and then got into the bus and arrived in Limenas around 2 p.m.

Limenas is a nice city and it is definitely the place to shop for gifts for your loved ones.

Nice entrance guarded by lime trees

We didn't get to do a lot of sightseeing because we were hungry and really wanted to check out the gift shop street, which turned out to be pretty big.

We had lunch at a really laid back restaurant on the shore with the traditional white and blue accents.

We had "a nice talk" with some kitties and some nice food. Mr. G. had Kleftiko, a traditional greek dish and I had some simple, fried sardines.

Kleftiko (Stolen Lamb) is made with slow-cooked lamb, sealed in a paper or foil pouch. The slow cooking and the wrapping make the meat tender and full of flavor. At this restaurant is was served with roasted potatoes and rice.

The sardines don't need many explanations, but deserve the attention because it is such a simple dish, perfect to be enjoyed at a seaside tavern.

We said goodbye to the cats and went shopping. We got some olive oil, some pine honey (people from thassos are very proud of their Thassian pine honey), some Retsina (Greek wine) and some other knick-knacks.

In a hurry to catch the last bus to Golden Beach, we took some photos of places we had to see on another day. And we actually came back in one of the next days because there was so much of the town we felt we missed.

The bus that takes you through different villages and to Limenas really comes in handy and it is affordable. For 2 Euros you can go from Golden Beach to Limenas in about 30-40 minutes. The downside is that the last bus from Limenas to Golden Beach was at around 6 p.m. so you actually have to sacrifice a day at the beach for isiting the capital.

Hope you enjoyed Day 2,

Thassos, Greece- Day 1

You might have noticed that we have been a bit MIA from the blog, but if you follow us on Instagram you would know by now that we went on vacation.

This year, for our rather late time off we chose to go to Greece because it is really convenient for us and we’ve been there 2 more time and had a great time. Greece is a nice choice because every island is different and offers a special experience.

A lot of tiny fish in port Keramouti

This time around we went to Thassos for 7 days. We didn’t know what to expect, but the main thing we wanted was a great beach with a lot of sand and clear water. We got that and more.  We stayed in a villa in Golden Beach which proved to be a great choice, it might be the best beach in Thassos.

In our first day, after a long road we arrived in Keramouti, and then to Thassos, in Limenas Port by ferry.

Locals fishing in Keramouti

This man did not seem very pleased with his catch, but I found the fish interesting

After a 30 minute bus ride we arrived in Golden Beach.  While we were in the bus we go to see other villages that we visited later on. At first, we were kind of confused because the bus kept on going up in the mountains for a long time  before we could actually spot the sea.

It's like they drive the ferry

Arriving in Limenas

This is actually one of the main attractions of the island: it has great mountains as well as great beaches. You can go hiking, the view leaves you breathless, you can stay all day at the beach or you can walk around the narrow-street villages.

We were excited to try the water in our first day that we changed as soon as we got in the room and went to the beach.  It was already around 2 o’clock and we were exhausted from the whole trip, but we had to jump in the water. I have to say, because we chose the middle of September the fear of  a cold snap followed us  all the time, although everybody says September is great for Greece.

Spotting the sea through the pine trees

Perfect view for our first day

Later on, a restaurant that was beautifully placed on the top of a cliff caught our eye, Vigli.  It was right next to the beach and the view was amazing, especially for a pair of beach-obsessed people like us.

Mr. G had to try the fresh fish, tsipura, which is basically the Greek name for dorado fish. Way to excited we forgot to take a photo of it. I had shrimp scampi, which was ok, shrimp on top of spaghetti, with tomatoes and feta cheese,  but I have to say that for an island, they could offer a little more when it comes to fresh fish and sea food.

Shrimp Scampi

After this late lunch, we came back to our sunbeds and enjoyed the rest of  the day with the sand at our feet.  Also, we kinda fell asleep. Not exactly what the doctor prescribed, but we were pretty tired and apparently really relaxed in the end.

Keep on visiting for day 2.

xoxo,