Eggless Orange Cake

I love citrus cakes and have been wanting to bake a orange cake for ages now. Last weekend I decided to find a recipe for eggless orange cake and bake it - I was craving for it !

Bubbles got involved in it too, so we both mum-daughter team started surfing the net to find a easy but trustworthy recipe. Even though there was no pic of the cake on this recipe we found, the poster's ( Donni Larson ) note impressed me and I decided to bake it. Mostly Bubbles prepared the whole batter - I only took out the orange juice for her ! It was very light fluffy and it didn't crumble at all. I didn't frost it either.

My sister asked for the recipe and she made it next day and apparently the cake came out perrfect. So I am keeping this recipe !


Ingredients:

1 and 1/2 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 cup unsweetened orange juice ( I freshly sqeezed almost three oranges )
1/3 cup canola or any vegetable oil
1 tsp grated orange zest ( used from the fresh orange)

Recipe:

Preheat oven to 180 deg C or 350 deg F.
Prepare a 20-23cm round cake pan. My round pan was with my sister, so I used bread loaf tin.
In a medium bowl, stir together flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder untill well mixed.
All at once, add oil, orange juice and orange zest.
Stir just enough to combine the ingredients. Resist the urge to overstir the batter, you will only deflate it.
Then immediately pour into the prepared tin.
Bake for 35-40 minutes for cakes or 25 to 30 min for cupcakes. or untill a toothpick poked into the middle of the batter comes out clean and it is lightly browned on the top.
cool completely before icing it.

It was perfect for kids' lunch box for their morning tea. I will try to make cupcakes out of it next time :)

Carrot-walnut muffins

I made a carrot-walnut cake the other day with the same recipe except that I have made a few changes to it now to reduce the calories. I don't have the pic of the cake but you can use the same recipe for cake as well.

I had never made a carrot cake since the kids don't like it ( well, they never ask for it the way they ask for banana cake or chocolate cake or mud cake). So, I decided to try it. Got the recipe from http://www.chelsea.co.nz/ but after finding the cake too oily, I made some changes to the recipe ( reduced oil and added milk). Here it is:

Ingredients:

3/4 cup self raising flour

3/4 cup wholemeal flour

1 tsp mixed spice

1/2 tsp cinnamon powder

1/2 tsp ginger powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup caster sugar

3 large eggs ( I used egg replacer 3 tsp)

1/2 cup sunflower/canola oil

1/2 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla essence

3/4 cups chopped walnuts

2 cups grated carrot

1/2 cup raisins

2 tbsp dessicated coconut

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180degC. Sift flour, spices and baking soda into a large mixing bowl. Add al lthe remaining ingredients and stir wit ha wooden spoon or fork until just combines. Don't beat.

Line a 20-30cm cake tin ( 6cm deep) with baking paper and grease well. Pour cake mixture in the prepared tin and smooth the surface. Bake for one and half hours. The cake is cooked when a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Cool it on a rack.

For the muffins, cook at 180degC for 18 minutes.

banana cake in a jiffy

I made this yesterday after having a sudden craving for eating a banana cake. Alright, alright, it wasn't a sudden craving, I was browsing the net for some easy banana cake recipe as I had three bananas browning up. Had no intention of making it straightaway but looking at all those mouthwatering pics along with the recipies, I jsut had to have one straightaway. And this one took 10min flat to prepare ( not counting the baking time ). I was planning to make some lemon icing too when I was browsing. But I didn't have icing sugar in the pantry, so we just ate it without icing - as usual :-)

You will need:

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup milk

150gms melted butter ( I used only 100 gms though)

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 eggs ( I used egg replacer as usual)

1 cups self raising flour

3 large mashed bananas

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 C. grease and flour a 20cm baking ring tin. Dissolve baking soda in milk. Beat the butter and sugar till creamy. beat in eggs. Stir in sifted flour, soda milk, banana. Turn into tin and bake for approx 45 min or untill a toothpick comes out clean from the centre of the cake.