Orange Yogurt Cake

Awww, the beauty of living in California - the land of milk and honey and cornucopia of heavenly fruits and vegetables.  Here we are in the middle of winter and yet, I could not be more excited because it's that time of year again... that's right - time for oranges!

This Martha recipe has been in my baking repertoire for quite a while and I absolutely love it for so many reasons:  it's quick and easy, I always have all the ingredients on hand, it's low fat, it's pretty, it's a refreshing showcase for oranges and... our kitchen gets to smell like fresh citrus clear into the afternoon.

Recently, we were staying at our friends' house and I decided to make this cake for a little post-Valentine's treat.  I got to pluck a couple of oranges straight from their orange tree to use...

...and ya know it just doesn't get any fresher than this.  Can you smell the fresh scent of citrusy goodness wafting off your screen?  You actually will only need one good sized, delicious orange for this recipe.

ORANGE YOGURT CAKE

(adapted from Martha's)

*Preheat oven to 350°

*Butter and sugar an 8-inch round cake pan.

In a medium sized bowl, sift together:

1 cup all purpose flour

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/8 tsp. baking soda 

pinch of salt

Add to:

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup plain, low-fat yogurt

1/4 cup canola oil

1 tsp. orange zest (save the rest of the orange's zest for the icing)

1 T. orange juice (save the rest of the orange's juice for icing)

1 large egg

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Pour the mixture into your prepared pan and bake until toothpick comes out clean, about 25 minutes.  Let cool on wire rack.  

While the cake is cooling (or after it is cooled), make this glaze:

Glaze:

Remaining juice from orange

Remaining zest from orange (to taste)

A couple of T. of powdered sugar (to taste)

Stir together and pour over slightly warm or cooled cake.  
Top with a little more powdered sugar and/or add a little design in orange rind for added flair.

Remember when you are grating fresh citrus to only grate off the colored part (not any of the white pith which is really bitter and no bueno.)  If you don't have a woodworker's inspired microplane grater by now, you really need to check them out (here is one I use at home.)  They work for so many other things besides citrus - ginger, nutmeg, and cinnamon just for starters!

All the ingredients blend together pretty easily in a bowl, or you can use a mixer to mix them together gently.

After mixing, you can see the bits of orange flecks, mmmm.

Pour gently into your prepared pan and spread out evenly with a rubber spatula.

As I've mentioned before, I really like to butter and sugar my pans before baking almost all my cakes.  I can't tell you how many people comment on the yummy crystally goodness it adds to each bite!

I love how this cake turns out - it's really great for breakfast or a nice, light dessert!

Enjoy.

Pink Cake Balls

A while back, I saw a post about these easy and pretty confections and knew I wanted to try them for Valentine's Day.  Like so many new and fun baking recipes, these cake balls have been bouncing around a couple of my favorite blogs, Bread and Honey being one of them, but it was Bakerella that dreamed up its creation.  I really wanted to make these as true pink velvet cake balls with cream cheese frosting, but because they had to survive 5 days of shipping, I went with a vanilla cake with vanilla frosting.  I am definitely going to try a dark chocolate dipped red velvet version of these next time, but this recipe definitely turned out pretty and was perfect for Valentine's Day!

I used the NY prize-winning vanilla cupcake recipe of Amy Sedaris from her freakish but hilarious book "I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence" (check it out if you ever get the chance!) but she was good enough to post the recipe online here too.  Any vanilla or other cake recipe of your choosing should do quite nicely.

So, to the cake batter, I added a heaping toothpick full of plain old "pink" of my ol' standby - Wilton icing color.  These paste colors are a standby/must for any kind of baking.  Michaels is a great place to buy them, or online, of course - individually, or in nice sets like this.  You will never have to buy a big fat bottle of watered down food coloring again.  (Of course, then, some nice, natural beet juice would have worked beautifully too, if I hadn't used them all up making Dr. P's perfect blend juice! :-)

Add as little or as much color to your liking keeping in mind that the color does brighten up a bit after baking.

Pour your beautiful batter into a buttered and floured cakepan.  (*As a general rule, I like to butter and sugar all my cake pans, which gives cakes a nice crystalli-ness, but in this cake, we just want a buttered/floured surface.)

After baking, crumble your cake right bake into the pan.

Make up a frosting to your liking.  I've made so many that I just kind of wing it with butter, powdered sugar, vanilla and salt to taste, but Amy's is great too.  Like I mentioned, if I am not shipping these next time, I am definitely going to try a cream cheese frosting (basically, 1 block of cream cheese + 1 cube of butter + powdered sugar, milk, salt and vanilla to taste.)

Stir well into your cake crumbs until combined into a nice, moist, "dough."

Use your ol' reliable 1 T. cookie scoop to make up your balls, or you can hand roll them to whatever size you like...

... then refrigerate for at least an hour to harden before heading into the dipping phase:

Start your dipping/coating mixture.  I always try to use my favorite chocolate from our local company, Sweet Earth Organic Chocolates.  Sweet Earth produces the only fair trade certified and certified organic white chocolate drops in the U.S.! (Way to set the bar so high, Dr. N!)

White chocolate is very touchy and easy to burn so you'll want to be careful when melting it.  I like to use this beautiful copper bowl (that I got second hand!) as the top of my homemade bain marie/double broiler setup.  Start a couple inches of water below into a low boil.  You'll want to be careful not to get any water into your chocolate to prevent any seizing.

Take your bowl of chocolate off the heat when there are just a few unmelted chips.  Continue to stir until fully melted.  White chocolate is very thick and cools quickly - here's a little trick for making it very smooth and a little thinner:  add a little canola oil, a bit at a time, until it reaches the perfect consistency when stirred!  (This trick works pretty much anytime you need a really smooth, thinner, white chocolate.)  You can then place your bowl back onto the somewhat cooled down water when you're done to keep it just warm enough for dipping.

Here's another fun trick - there is no need to go out and buy a fancy dipping fork for this project or other chocolate projects.  If you happen to have a plastic fork at home (well...let's hope you don't keep this nasty stuff around as general rule, but let's just say you happen to have one that you didn't want to throw out from when you had that salad the other day...) just break off the inner prongs, leaving the other two intact, et voila!  Instant chocolate dipping tool :)

We found the best way to coat the balls was to simply lower them into the chocolate and gently roll them until coated.  If this is done delicately, not too many crumbs will fall off. 

You can place the balls on an oil sprayed cooling rack over a cookie sheet (you might still need to unstick them a bit after cooling) or place them on parchment paper or sprayed down foil (but there will be a little bit of chocolate pooling under each one...) so- you're choice.  If you're looking to refrigerate these, let them come to room temperature before doing so.  

A fun sprinkling of sugar can be done while the balls are still warm, or leave as is.  

(Sure wish I had taken a photo of these cross-sectioned - but I'll leave that up to your imagination ;)

I decided to put each cake ball into its own If You Care baking cup - from a line of great unbleached parchment paper products that I get from our local health food store and which I thought looked really nice with the white chocolate.

So here they are - all dressed up and ready for Valentine's Day! :-)

Cream Filled Crepes With Olallieberry Jam

Don is our bakerbee today - he decided to spoil me with homemade crepes with cream filling and jam.  Don is a fan of Alton Brown and so used his great recipe for crepes (here.)

He pre-assembled the ingredients...

...and poured the necessary ingredients into the blender.  Once the mixture is blended, the whole mix goes into the refrigerator for one hour.  This is a great step to remember because it helps the bubbles to settle down and therefore prevents the delicate crepes from tearing in the pan.

Just one ounce of batter is needed.

This Swiss Diamond crepe pan was a gift and what a gift it is.  It is absolutely phenomenal for crepes - the diamond dust surface creates a perfect non-stick surface that is true to its word. One side of the pan is sloped so you can just slide your crepe (or omelet or egg or whatever you're cooking) right onto your plate.

Once you add the batter, you just tilt the pan in a slow swirl to coat.

This long handled nylon spreader pulls double duty for flipping crepes - it works perfectly.

Perfectly sizzled...

...and perfectly slid off.

The filling could be made with a variety of different choice ingredients - cottage cheese, cream cheese, sour cream, creme fraiche... We just happened to have sour cream in the 'fridge, so added some sifted powdered sugar to that to create a sweet/tart accompaniment.

Fill the crepe with as little or as much cream filling as you'd like.

Don used our favorite Olallie jam to top the crepes.  

Crepes can go with so many delicious fruits - berry, cherry, apple, lemon, peach, apricot... or just plain cinnamon and sugar is scrumptious.

Top with another snow dusting of powdered sugar and you've got yourself a delicious treat. 

This recipe was perfect - thanks, Don (and Alton!)  :-)