Sarah is a lovely friend, who had given some thought to starting up her own food blog. Although with University, placements, study, work, sport, seeing family and friends, cooking and (my most dreaded task) cleaning, there’s not a heap of time to create and manage a blog. Wow, she does do a lot, I don’t know how she fits it all in.
I suggested to her that if she ever wanted to post anything I’d be happy to have her guest blog on my site. And here they are, my first guest food bloggers – please welcome Sarah and Jeremy. They have chosen a lovely orange and poppyseed cake, which is a bit different to the one I normally make, which has a vanilla flavoured cake with a small hint of orange in the frosting. This cake has lovely strong orange flavours throughout and is perfect for parties or even taking to work. I’ll pass over to Sarah and Jeremy now… (sorry it’s taken me so long to post it)
Hi! We are Sarah and Jeremy, and Sarah works with Anita. We have been promising this guest blog for ages and have finally got ourselves organised. We have gone with something simple and relatively easy that stores well and is different from Anita’s usual fare. We hope that you enjoy!
Orange and Poppyseed Cake
Recipe adapted from Family Circle cooking book
1 large orange
⅔ cup milk, warm
½ cup poppy seed
250g unsalted butter
1½ cups caster sugar
3 eggs, slightly beaten
3 cups SR flour
Extra ⅓ cup milk, cold
Icing sugar for dusting
Place poppy seeds and warm milk in a bowl and soak for an hour. (or until your orange is cooked, cooled and puréed – as explained below).
Place whole orange in a saucepan and cover with water. Bring to the boil, reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes. It is ok if the water does not completely cover the orange (as seen in the picture), just turn it occasionally and let it cook a little longer (until the rind is soft).
When the orange is soft and easy to prick with a fork, turn the heat off and leave the orange in the hot water for a further 20 minutes.
Drain, and rinse under cold water. Cool for 1 hour. If pushed for time, we sometimes cut up the orange and place in the freezer until cool).
Cut the cooled orange into eighths (do not peel); remove seeds and blend until smooth.
Cream the butter and sugar.
Beat in puréed orange – the mixture will look lumpy.
Beat in the eggs.
Sieve in flour and stir in poppy seed and milk mixture.
Spoon mixture into greased 24cm ring tin – fluted is good. This is a large cake mixture, so you will need a large ring tin (we use a silicone ring tin, which makes it really easy to turn out).
Bake at 180˚C for 45 min, or until a skewer comes out clean.
Remove from oven and immediately, whilst the cake is still in the tin, brush with half the extra milk using a pastry brush. This extra milk makes the cake lovely and moist.
Leave cake in tin for 5 min before turning out.
Brush with remaining milk and leave to cool.
When cool, lightly dust with icing sugar.
This cake is best kept in the fridge, but freezes really well. We regularly put a quarter of this cake in the freezer for a future date, and just allow it to defrost in the fridge.
Anita! This looks amazing. I am so happy you decided Sarah and Jeremy to guest, hope we see regular features from them or otherwise, their own blog?
Trissa
How interesting to use the whole orange in the cake! It sounds like a wonderful flavor combination. Welcome to blogging, Sarah and Jeremy!
Congratulations on your first guest Anita and congratulations on your first post Sarah and Jeremy.
Looks fabulous! Love how you can see all the poppyseeds studded into the centre of the cake. So pretty.
Nice to meet you, Sarah and Jeremy!
I don’t think I have ever seen an orange handled in quite this way. So the orange flavor in your cake must be very strong with all that rind.
It’t truly a lovely looking cake!
Thanks for the guest post, Anita!
Hi Anita, nice your blog!
I love your poppy cake! I will try it soon…….
Kisses from Rome, Italy 😉
i love orange and poppy seeds together..great recipe
sweetlife
Oohh yummy looking cake! Hopefully see more posts (or a blog) by Sarah and Jeremy
Having a whole orange must give it a beautiful orange flavour! Looks great in the decorative pan too.
What a great guest post! That cake looks delicious and I love the pattern of the bundt cake tin 🙂
Hello to your lovely guest bloggers. I adore simple cakes like this orange and poppy seed bundt!
Wow, what a nice cake…love the idea of how you use the orange…
I’ve often wondered why the poppyseeds need to be soaked in milk first?
Hi Anita,Your beautiful yummy orange cake was made from fresh oranges off my tree.It was a birthday gift for a friend.She LOVED it.Thank-you.
Your cake look so delicious and yummy.
[…] recipe from Leave Room for Dessert is a well loved one that I’m trying for the first time in Bundt form. If you dnt have a […]
Thank you so much Sarah and Jeremy (and Family Circle cook book). I’ve been craving orange poppy seed cake all week and didn’t see it for sale anywhere. I finally made a cake with this recipe and it’s absolutely AMAZING. It’s now my favourite cake ever. I actually prefer this over the richer, chocolatey cakes out there as this one is so fragrant and moist and has the most delicious and intense orange flavour. I used a pressure cooker to boil the orange so it took hardly any time at all. It’s made me very happy.
I’m feeling a bit high now. Those poppy seeds…