Monday, January 25, 2010

Orange Cake II








I was tempted to leave this post wordless but knowing me, I am a woman of "not-so-few" words so if you are just here to check out the orange cake I baked (that everyone on my twitter list probably knows about by now), you can click the X button on the top right hand corner of the browser like right now. Oh. If you are wondering why the photos are a bit different than the other posts, that is because I took them. My brother finally declared he was not going to take anymore photos for me unpaid and I am too broke to pay him. Nah. Of course not. It was a matter of timing and if you are really interested in the real reason, you know what to do!

So. Orange cake.
The second orange cake.
I have been reading this blog for awhile now and her Sicilian Orange Cake has been on my to-do-list ever since she posted it up. I did not have Sicilian oranges on hand so I used the normal variety. Like the last time, I did not have all the required ingredients so it was a trip down to the supermarket at 12.45am to grab a packet of self-raising flour. Luckily this time, it did not involve any cooling (no fans) and it used relatively few bowls and things so that means less clean up. Yay! It was a pretty straightforward and uncomplicated recipe which did not require much time which was perfect for a very lazy student who needs the last hours to try to finish up her readings. It turned out quite superbly beautiful as you can see and I absolutely adored the color of it. Being the Amy that I am, I baked this cake
the night on the day in which I have a 9am class and so it was rushrushrush to make the icing and take photos of the cake before I rushrushrush to school. I did not have a lot of time to do everything so I am pretty pleased the photos turned out alright.

I was of course late for school. By the time I sat down, I was ravenous and proceeded to take out a slice of the orange cake which my mother lovingly packed for me while I was rushing to stuff my books into my bag and started eating, oblivious to the fact that the lecturer was having a round of "Let me see if I remember your names". It was not till the person next to me nudged me that I looked up from my cake, holding my fork in mid-air and realized that he had reached me and
obviously could not remember my name, my chinese name. I stupidly told him my name with my fork still in mid-air and I swear I could see him making a big cross on the name sheet he was holding. Ah well. I think I am going to fail that class. Haha.

I gave the other slice I brought to my lunch buddy for that day and shared my half-eaten piece with my good friend who obviously did not mind it being half-eaten and both of them declared it REALLY GOOD. I have to disagree though. I thought that the orange flavour was not pronounced enough perhaps due to the kind of oranges I used and that the cake was so so so sweet that I could only taste the sugar. I felt like I was eating a sugar cake. Although I have to say in all fairness, it was still a pretty good cake and it will definitely taste awesome for someone who has a sweet tooth. I might try this again maybe with less sugar next time but you should try making it and tell me what you think eh?

Making this orange cake unlike the other made me realize that maybe that is what we all want in life, to be simple, uncomplicated and amazingly sweet. Of course, we do not always get what we want and sometimes we do not even know whether that is what we want. Life is full of confusion, doubts and probably a large dose of sorrow but someday, we will get an orange cake day and maybe everything will be alright again.

Meet me, will you on an orange cake day?


10 comments:

♥Sugar♥Plum♥Fairy♥ said...

Very pretty cake with v pretty pics-this sure is a wonderful and moist cake....

chocolatecup said...

@vanillastrawberryspringfields awww. thank you!!! please do promise me you will try to make it:)

Anonymous said...

The cake looks gorgeous! Different variety of oranges will affect the taste. I am glad you like it. Thanks for the mention!

chocolatecup said...

@Ellie thanks for the lovely blog and recipe! will definitely try out more of your recipes soon:)

Anonymous said...

Hello, lovely blogg! And thanks for stopping by The Foreign Kitchen!

Reading this reminded me of a disastrous mandarin cake I made that ended up looking more like baby mush. After a lot of tweaking and rethinking I came up with a great orange cake base ( with Valencia oranges) that I made into petit fours and covered with white chocolate:
http://theforeignkitchen.blogspot.com/2009/07/orange-and-white-chocolate-petit-fours.html

Speaking of chocolate...you'll have to excuse me while I drool over those brownies you made.

Martina from The Foreign Kitchen

Anonymous said...

hi amy the baker, this looks fab. but more fab than anything else is how you always make an effort to let your friends try your cakes(: really appreciate that.
-meiling

chocolatecup said...

@martina i checked out those petit fours and i think i will actually gobble up more than my conservative guess to how many you ate although there is a slight problem of white choc. not a fan so give me your petit fours sans that and we are good to go:)

chocolatecup said...

@meiling meet me on an orange cake day:)

Mae said...

I have those towels I think (IKEA? tee hee!) I completely love them.

I also love your photos. Simple. Clean. Bright.

Also, delicious.

chocolatecup said...

@Mae: oml! you caught me! yesss! those tea towels are from IKEA! perfect for teacakes and all:) thank you for your lovely comments on my photos! i am still working on my photo-taking and editing skills:)