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,

Easy Chestnut Gnocchi Recipe | You've Got Meal!

It is entirely Mrs. G's merit for introducing chestnuts in our kitchen and it was a stroke of inspirations from her. We first ate the woody fruit boiled and, although I have to admit my reticence, I really enjoyed the sweet, nutty,  taste of the chestnut. And, from that to gnocchi there was just one more step.

Chestnut gnocchi is a dish cooked in North Italy, in the mountainous region where wheat flour was often substituted with chestnut flour or buckwheat flour (Pizzoccheri della Valtellina comes to mind here). The gnocchi is really easy to make, either with pureed fruit or with flour, depending on what you can get your hands on. There isn’t much of a difference in texture or taste, but you have to keep in mind the fact that if you boil the chestnuts and mash them, they will have some water left in them. If using flour, also use potatoes (boiled or baked) and replace the wheat flour (all or part of it) with the chestnut flour.

Anyway, this the way we made the gnocchi: 

• 300 grams of blitzed (in a blender) boiled chestnuts, 
• 200 grams of wheat flour,
• 1 egg, 
• a healthy splash of a good quality, fruity olive oil, 
• salt.

1. Mix all the ingredients together, adding more water if necessary to make the dough. Knead it until you get a silky outcome and let the dough rest in the fridge for half an hour. Quick note here: love the color of this gnocchi – dark brown, similar to a classic toffee. 
2. Next, we split the dough into 4, and worked each piece into a, let’s call it snake form, 2 cm thick. 
3. Cut each string of rolled dough in equal 2-3 cm gnocchi dollops. 
4. In order to give them the classic look, roll each gnocchi on the back of a (preferably long) fork. 
5. In order to cook the pasta, bring to a boil a nice amount of salted water and put in it some gnocchi, put make sure you don’t overcrowd the pot, they will need room to rise and cook – I kept mine around 4 minutes longer after they’ve raised to the surfaced. 
6. Remove from the pot and let them steam for 2 minutes.

 

You know from previous posts that we enjoyed the butter-sage mix for the gnocchi, so we decided to play it safe for our first chestnut cooking attempt. 

1. Melt 75 grams of butter on medium heat and cook 2-3 tbs. of chopped sage in it for 30 seconds. 
2. Pop the gnocchi in the pan and mix well in order to make sure it is well coated with the sage and butter, cook for 2-3 minutes. 
3. Plate and grate a fair amount of Pecorino Romano, maybe add a tiny splash of olive oil. 

As a couple of conclusions to this dish, I have to say that chestnut gnocchi is not a bad option at all from the classic recipe, I would come back to it on special occasions, but I think I would stick to the spuds for the “everyday” gnocchi. 

The sweet and nutty taste is something special and it does give a rather unique feel to the whole dish -  also quite filling, I couldn’t eat my usual portion of pasta. And it does have the wow factor when presented at a dinner table, so keep that in mind when trying to figure out a menu for an occasion like that. 

Enjoy,

Lemon Drizzle Cake

If you're ready for something sweet but also sour, buttery and moist, this recipe is perfect. It makes a great breakfast, you can serve it in the afternoon with tea or better yet, spoil yourself with a decadent dessert if you add it some cream and/or berries.

For one loaf you will need:

Recipe from the book "Carte regala de bucate"- Principesa Margareta a Romaniei

225g room temperature butter
225g sugar
225 all purpose flour
4 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
2-3 tbsp poppy seeds

For the syrup:
2 lemons juiced
100 ml water
200 g sugar

• With a hand mixer mix the sugar and butter until you get a white cream. 
• Add the eggs one by one and keep mixing.
• In a different bowl, mix the dry ingredients, the flour with the baking powder and the poppy seeds.
• Mix the dry ingredients with the wet ones.
• Pop it in the heated oven in a bread tin and let it cook for 40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
• While the cake cooks you should prepare the sauce. 
• In a small sauce pan mix the water, sugar and lemon juice and simmer it for 10 minutes
• As soon as you take the cake out of the oven pierce the whole top with a fork and pour the hot sauce on it.
• The cake will absorb the syrup and it's gonna go from great to amazing in a couple of minutes.
• Let it cool in the tray before cutting it.

Extra: If you like lemon zest, you can add the zest from 1 lemon in the cake dough after you add the eggs.

Enjoy!
Mrs. G.